


Sky-Walker

by queen_edmund_pevensie



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Family, Slavery, Spiritual, Tatooine, anyway the theology part went away but i did go deep into that Force Stuff at the end, i a catholic love the virgin mary, just catch me cryin editing my own piece of fiction about fiction, pretty heavy handed christian theology involving VIRGIN BIRTHS, space theology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-22
Updated: 2018-04-16
Packaged: 2018-09-19 06:10:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 24,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9421985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queen_edmund_pevensie/pseuds/queen_edmund_pevensie
Summary: Shmi raises a son on Tatooine, a son she knows is the most important child in the galaxy.





	1. Shmi

Shmi was not born on Tatooine. She knows this much. She thinks she remembers the green forests and blue oceans of her home planet, but she can't be sure it isn't just a dream –a dream like the kind, unweathered faces she imagines her parents having, or a dream like the Force and the stars. Shmi knows she wasn't born on Tatooine, but she does not know any other life.

She was brought here –ripped away from her parents and her life –when she was small (she cannot remember how old she was; no one cares how old a slave is until they are too old to work) and brought to work on a moisture farm controlled by the Hutts, because her hands were small enough to reach into tight, narrow spaces between the machinery, and slave labor, she is told time and time again, is cheaper than droids. The work is hard and Shmi is lonely. None of the children speak to each other –many of them, Shmi included, can't speak Basic, and they are beaten for being stupid. (Shmi learns, of course, eventually. Shmi learns Huttese and Basic and handful of other languages well enough to get by. By the time she is an adult, Shmi can only remember a phrase or two in her own language.)

Some of the grown-ups who work on the moisture farm take special care of the children –doing what they can to keep them safe. They sneak them extra rations and clean their wounds, patch up their clothes. They tell them stories about the stars. About their suns who loved Tatooine too much and dried up all the water, about the Force maintaining life on Tatooine because Tatooine was the center of the galaxy. They tell stories about the Jedi, brave warriors of the Force. One night, an old slave tells the children by firelight that a Jedi will be born on Tatooine; she says that he will free the slaves.

"How do you know?" Shmi whispers into the dark.

The old woman hums in response. The old woman hums all the time. When she is mending clothes and when she is sleeping. When she is perfectly still and silent she hums soothingly, thoughtfully. "I see it in the stars," the old woman tells her slowly. "And in the Force."

"You can see the Force?" asks another one of the children. He's a little older than Shmi. He shines when he speaks. "I thought only Jedi can see the Force."

The old woman hums again. "No," she says. "We all can. We are all connected. The Jedi just more so."

A little girl with white blonde hair and sunburnt cheeks pipes up. "What about the one who will free us? Will he feel the Force?"

"He will be the Force," the old woman tells the children.

Shmi wonders what it would feel like to be the Force. What such a person would like.

"Will they be a person?" she wonders aloud.

"Do you mean will they be human?" the woman hums. "It's hard to say. Many Jedi are, but the greatest Jedi of all time is rumored to have great big ears, and have claws, and stand two feet tall!" The children gasp.

Shmi shakes her head. "Will he be alive?" she asks.

The old woman laughs. "Oh," she coos. "Of course he'll be alive! He'll be born, a baby, grow up, free the slaves! He has to be alive!"

***

Shmi think it's all a myth by the time she's sixteen and they sell her to do housework for a man who smuggles for the Hutts. She is not suited to do housework (she is not suited to be a slave at all –that's what they tell the man they sell her to, too much spirit, too much hope to ever really be compliant), and she is restless, but he takes her on his starship with him so she can maintain that. Shmi prefers that –the bigness and nothingness of hyperspace, how the stars seem to call her name –to his dusty house on Tatooine, and he is kind enough. She only stays with him for one standard year before he sells her again, but she visits other planets and sees the stars. She wants to see them all, one day.

The man laughs at her the one time she tells him. "It's impossible," he says. "There are billions and billions of planets in the galaxy."

***

When Shmi is approaching thirty, she works in Gardulla the Hutt's household repairing droids some of the time and as a house servant when Gardulla is on planet. During the harvest, she works on her moisture farms, like she did when she was a child. She does not believe in the old stories. She does not want to see the stars. She does not love Tatooine or her suns. She does not love the galaxy. She is kind to the younglings who work alongside her, but she is resolved to never have children, to never bring a child into a world where they will be a slave.

And yet, in spite of herself, Shmi still dreams about the Force, about a child who frees the salves, about a push and pull in the galaxy, about stars dying and being born in the same instant; a famine strikes one planet just as another has its most fruitful harvest.

Shmi dreams about balance.

She dreams about the child most of all. He has bright blue eyes and golden hair, out of place on Tatooine. He looks at Shmi and blinks. "Mama?" he says quietly. How old is this boy? Nine or ten, maybe. Twenty? Perhaps older? Older than Shmi? Her heart leaps when she sees him and she reaches a hand out to touch his cheek. "One day, I'm gonna visit every planet in the galaxy," he whispers, turning his strange, ageless face towards the stars.

Shmi smiles. "You will be the first to do it," Shmi whispers, her fingers still brushing the boy's cheek. "My sky-walker."

Shmi knows the moment she opens her eyes that she is pregnant. She knows that her child, the boy from her dreams, is the Chosen One, the one who will free Tatooine. She looks up at her suns and does not mourn for the galaxy, does not see cruelty everywhere she looks. She sees love and kindness in Mos Espa, and for the first time in years, Shmi looks to the stars and hopes for the future.

***

Anakin is born in the dead of night during the dry season. He is delivered on a moisture farm –where Shmi was helping with repairs during the off season –by farmhands and droids. In the last year, there has been no shortage of questions about her son. Will she keep it? Who is the father? They want to know if she was raped, if the father knows about his child. They want to know if Shmi is all right, what she will do once the child is born.

Shmi has no answers, no father, no clue. He friends grow tired of her answers about the Force, but her best friend, Hatore, who believes in Shmi and the Force, turns to her one day, during the harvest, tinkering with the machinery, her eyes shining. "Oh Shmi," she croons. "What shall you name him?"

Shmi, at last, has an answer.

"Anakin," she tells Hatore. "Anakin Skywalker." Hatore, who was born into slavery, nods. Daydancer is the name she was given before her mother knew if she would survive infancy. Hatore is the name she was given when she lived to see her third birthday. But Shmi knows Anakin will live, and that he will walk among the stars.

"Anakin," Hatore echoes. "He's a miracle."

***

"Anakin," Shmi croons the night Anakin is born. He screams and screams, and Shmi worries that he will wake the Hutts and they will take him –kill him–before she has held him in her arms. He worry drowns out her pain, and Anakin screams louder still, squirming in Hatore's arms. Writhing, screaming, tears making tracks on his filthy, bloody face, Shmi thinks he looks like a wild thing–and nothing like her. Hatore cleans Anakin, cuts his umbilical cord, wraps him in loose, rough fabric. She hands him to Shmi and in the instant before he lands in her arms, Shmi panics. Anakin is hers and the galaxy is cruel. She is responsible for the life and happiness of a silly, squirming, fragile looking thing, with arms that are as long as he is, and eyes that take up his whole face. And he is not hers. He is Gardulla's and the Galaxy's and the Force's.

Shmi stops panicking once she feels Anakin's weight in her arms. He is warm, heavy enough against her breast. He does not cry in Shmi's arms, he does not squirm. Anakin looks up at Shmi, blinking slowly, like he's trying to memorize her face, and for first time she can remember, Shmi is at peace.

"Anakin," she weeps. She strokes his cheek with on hesitant finger. Anakin, though Shmi knows he is too young to have the musculature to do so, smiles.


	2. The Force

The first year of his life, Anakin spends strapped to his mother's chest or her back, or in her arms. Every time Shmi tries to put him down or walk away, he cries and cries and cries. When Shmi is made to go back to work – too soon, too tired, and too achingly aware of Anakin to do much good, but the Hutts are cruel and this is her punishment for having a child without their permission or knowledge – Shmi leaves him with the other children – children who are too young or too weak to work. People Anakin otherwise likes try to hold him without his mother near, and he screams and cries, and he doesn't stop until Shmi comes back, takes him in her arms.

"My sky-walker," Shmi coos. "What am I going to do with you?" Anakin does not answer. He is two weeks old, after all, but Shmi straps her still sleeping son to her chest after another week of Anakin crying until he is reunited with his mother each night. She works with Anakin staring up at her. He stays silent as she serves Gardulla, cleans the slime trails she leaves behind with Anakin's head pressed firmly against her breast, her knees and back aching with the added weight, but Shmi does not mind. Anakin smiles and watches his mother intently.

When Shmi had become pregnant with Anakin, it had been the first time she had thought about the Force in years. Her friends, the other slaves, even the Hutts, were all convinced that Anakin was a gift of the Force. A miracle. There were other, more obvious solutions (they seemed to believe all at once) to Shmi's mysterious pregnancy, but no one doubted that Anakin was a miracle from the moment he was conceived. All life on Tatooine was a miracle, after all, Hatore remarked. No one, except Shmi, who, after she got over the shock, the impossibility of it, wept. A child born into slavery. A child who would know no happiness. But Shmi could not get rid of the child, no matter how much she wanted to. She wept when she thought of his future, but Hatore reminded her of the stories of the Chosen One every slave on Tatooine and across the Galaxy had heard. And when Shmi remembered the boy from her dreams, she knew that though the Galaxy may not lover her son, she was determined to do so. Eventually, Shmi agrees; Anakin is a miracle – a gift of the Force.

But it is not until Anakin is born and placed into her arms that Shmi knows the Force. The first time Anakin opens his eyes, the Galaxy lights up around her. The lifeforms surrounding Shmi seem warmer, brighter somehow. Tatooine is alive in a way that it hadn't been in the moment before.

Shmi feels the anticipation of those around her as her own, the distress of her son cutting clean through her, leaving her breathless, winded. Her mind quiets as Anakin falls asleep against her.

Shmi knows her son can use the Force, can feel the Force. She thinks he must use it to protect her from the Hutts. She hasn't know the touch of a whip since Anakin was born. The thought of it makes her stomach churn, the idea that her infant son knows the Hutts are bad and will hurt them, that he can protect her from dangers Shmi knows she will not be able keep away from him for long. She hopes that instinct will save him when he's older, but Shmi's new connection to the Force –or maybe just dread, cold and dead like the hearts of burnt out stars – tells her otherwise.

She is sick the moment she realizes Anakin can feel her the way she can feel him. Anakin is bright, a beacon of light and warmth –no matter how far, Shmi always knows where is and what he is doing. She knows if he is hungry or needs to be changed a moment before Anakin starts to cry. She knows when her son is happy, when he sad, when he is scared.

Shmi realizes that if she can feel when Anakin is afraid – the blind nameless terror of an infant without words or knowledge, just his mother and the rest of the galaxy – then Anakin must feel Shmi's fear. And Shmi is afraid. She cannot think for the fear sometimes; fear for herself, her friends, her son most of all. What would happen to Anakin, uncooperative, moody, attached to Shmi like a limb, if something were to happen to her? What will happen to him as he gets older? They may be sold, separated, killed at a master's whim. Will the Jedi come for her child? Would she let them take him? (Of course she would, Shmi says to herself, shaking at her selfishness. They could take Anakin and leave her to die if it meant a life – a free life, a life on any planet in the galaxy besides Tatooine.) All that fear, Anakin feels as his own. She fears she cannot protect him, but no child should have to bear the fears of his mother.

Anakin starts to use to Force with demonstrable purpose around five months old. He moves a rag doll –takes it from one of the other children, right out of her surprised hands, into his. The other child, about two, starts to cry, and Anakin smiles for only a second before he drops the doll and starts crying too.

Shmi's heart skips a beat as she watches the doll fly across the room. She looks around the room, panicked that they are not alone. If anyone sees - if anyone knows who Anakin really is, if the Hutts find out how she came to have a son at all -Shmi is sure they would not let him stay here with her. She is sure they would kill him for being the Chosen One, for one day maybe overthrowing their slave empire, or for one day maybe inciting other slaves to rebel against them. Shmi scoops Anakin up and hands the girl the doll back. Anakin's sobs dissolve into laughter and he rests his head on Shmi's chest, making the doll wave playfully at the other child.

It was only the three of them in the room. It's Shmi's turn to watch the children, but it is only Anakin and this little girl who are left in Gardulla's household. No one saw. No one yet knows of Anakin's power, that he will free the slaves, that he will free himself and his children, and if Shmi is lucky enough to live that long, he will free her too. Shmi sighs. "What am I going to do with you, my sky-walker?" Shmi wonders aloud, cradling his head. Anakin babbles a response, paying more attention to the girl than his mother. The doll flies into the air and back down into the girl's hands, and both children laugh.

***

Before Anakin is born, Shmi begins to piece together a small holo-mobile out of old bits of scrap metal. It takes her over a year, and Anakin is already two months old by the time it's ready and can already distinguish shapes and colors and is, all and all, a pretty good sleeper. Shmi hangs it up above his crib anyway (and it's barely a crib and it belongs to the Hutts, like Shmi, like Anakin), and Anakin stares at it for hours. It's meant to sing and project holograms of planets and star systems and starships, but the pictures are glitchy and Shmi couldn't get the broken pieces to do much more whine, so Shmi never turns it on, but as long as Anakin is watching it, it rotates slowly, though he seems to be more fascinated with the clicking of the machinery than anything else.

One night, Shmi wakes up to a soft twinkling sound by Anakin's crib and a light twinkling sound in the Force that tells her that Anakin is awake but doesn't need anything. He does not want to wake Shmi, and he doesn't make a sound, so Shmi turns over on her side to watch him. Eyes as big and bright as Tatooine's twin suns stare up at the steady rotation of the mobile, and it takes Shmi a few breathless seconds before she realizes that the mobile is playing the twinkling music, the machinery clicking solidly into place. Anakin turns his eyes towards his mother.

"Anakin," she sighs. Anakin makes a soft noise at the sound of his name. "Did you fix the mobile?" In vivid color, planets stars, moons, starships dance above Anakin. "Did you get it to work?" Anakin makes no answer. He closes his eyes and falls asleep. The twinkling in the Force dies off a little, but the twinkling from the holo-mobile continues until Shmi gets up to switch it off.

***

Shmi saves her stipend, which is less than a credit a week to be used for emergencies (extra food, material for clothes, so the Hutts don't have to bother) to buy Anakin a present for his first birthday. He is long, lean, bright-eyed, and Shmi can finally put him down and leave a room without him crying. To survive a whole year on Tatooine is something to be celebrated so Shmi buys Anakin something soft; something different than everything on Tatooine and the sand and the clothes they wear, the blankets they sleep on – a cloth doll, a stuffed bantha. Shmi hopes it will keep Anakin from stealing the other children's toys.

Anakin wakes up early on his first birthday. He knows three or four words, speaks rapidly in spite of his general unintelligibility. It doesn't matter to Shmi. Anakin babbles to Shmi as she works, copying sounds in Huttese and Basic. He says "Mama" and "No" in both languages with clarity, and now, on his first birthday, Anakin is up with the first sun and is babbling away, just to see if anyone is listening.

Shmi picks Anakin up and the Force lights up between them.

"Mama, Mama," says Anakin giddily, twisting his little hands into Shmi's hair.

"Good morning, my sky-walker," Shmi says, planting a kiss on Anakin's cheek. He giggles and returns the favor messily. "I have something for you Anakin," she says. "But we must be quiet and let the others sleep." Shmi holds her finger to her lips and Anakin tries to copy here. The slave quarters hum with the quietness of restful sleep. "Good," she says, plopping Anakin down on her bed. From underneath, she retrieves the stuffed bantha. When Anakin sees it, he starts babbling again, and Shmi has to tighten her grip a little to stop it from flying out of her hands toward him.

Anakin's face goes red with frustration and the Force buzzes irritably around him. "Mama," he groans. He reaches for the bantha. "Mama."

Shmi scoops Anakin into her lap and sits on the bed with him. He grabs the toy and whacks it across Shmi's lap playfully. He is laughing good-naturedly, and he is no longer paying attention to Shmi. Anakin has one of the bantha's leg in his mouth, chewing it absently.

"We must be more careful about the Force, Anakin," she murmurs, smoothing Anakin's peach fuzz of hair. "The Hutts will not like how powerful you are." Anakin gurgles, taking the bantha's foot out of his mouth for long enough to stare up at Shmi with big blue eyes, and to try to press the slimy toy into Shmi's hands. He does not know the Force from anything else, he does not know – how could he? – how powerful he is, how special he is, and how much danger that puts him in. For now, Anakin has survived his first year, a miracle in itself on Tatooine, and he is happy enough in the early morning to sit in his mother's arms, the Force alive and sparkling between them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is probably??? the last chapter where I talk so much about the Force, which is why I'm disappointed in myself. I wanted to write like 100k fic just about The Force. Maybe some other day.


	3. Light

Shmi is working on the vaporators under the heat of the Tatooine’s twin suns, when the other mechanic stops what he’s doing and wipes his brow, letting out a soft laugh.

“Shmi,” he says. Shmi looks up from her work and wipes her greasy hands on her skirt. “Isn’t that your little boy?” Shmi’s heart skips a beat, but she turns around to see Anakin toddling towards her, very slowly, stumbling every few steps. He’s about fifty yards away when he falls, and at first he tries to push himself back up, but he makes eye contact with Shmi and starts to cry instead, sticking his sandy hand in his mouth.

“Ani,” Shmi coos, leaving the vaporators behind her. She crouches down next to him. He must have snuck away from the woman who was supposed to be watching the children, wearing nothing but the coarse pants given to the slave children. It was a far enough walk for Shmi, and Anakin…

This is the first time Shmi has seen Anakin walk anywhere. Even a few steps. In the last few weeks, he has been pulling himself up, but not taking any steps. Shmi is wary of letting Anakin start to walk. The longer Anakin waits to learn to walk, the longer the Hutts wait to put Anakin to work, to find something for him to do. Lucky there’s only Shmi and the other mechanic out here in the middle of the dessert right now.

Shmi brushes some sand off of Anakin’s face and takes his hands out of his mouth. “What are you doing out here, Ani?” His face is bright pink from the sun and the heat and there are tears in his eyes.

“Mama, hurts,” he tells her sticking his hands right back in his mouth.

Shmi sighs and picks Anakin up. He takes his hands out of his mouth to wrap them around Shmi’s neck. She carries him back to where she is working on the vaporators, sets him back in the sand. “I’m sorry, Ani,” she tells him, and she means it. His cheeks aren’t just red from his walk in the dessert, she realizes, and Shmi can almost feel a sharp pain at the back of her own mouth where she’s sure Anakin’s molars are coming in. “I can’t do anything for you now.” But she kisses his jaw where she thinks the pain is, and he smiles, grabs her face and kisses her back. “Watch Mama work,” Shmi says, standing up, turning back to vaporators. She can feel Anakin’s eyes on her back, intent and smiling, as Shmi makes the vaporator sing back to life.

“Mama,” he chirps. Mama is Anakin’s favorite word, and even though he knows what Shmi has been assured is a normal amount for children his age, he never says a thing to Shmi without addressing her first. Mama, Mama, Mama. “You did it!” he says. Shmi turns to him, his puffy cheeks, his sun-bleached hair, eyes staring past her at the machinery. She sits in the sand across from him. Close enough that she could pick him up from here. A few steps for Anakin’s little legs.  
“Would you like to see how?” Shmi asks him. Anakin laughs and pushes himself up to his feet, a little unstable and taking three hesitant steps towards his mother before falling back down on his bottom. He’s still another step away from Shmi, and she wonders for a moment if she should give it up for now, but before she can move, Anakin pushes himself up again, and takes the last step towards Shmi, hands outstretched. He falls, this time in her lap, hands reaching up to touch Shmi’s face. He’s beaming, laughing.

“Mama, Mama, Mama.”

Shmi laughs with him, taking his hands gently off her face, turning him around so he can see the vaporator. He’s much too young, much too focused on lifting and dropping Shmi’s hands, for any of this to do him any real good, but Shmi walks him through how to do regular tune-ups on all the equipment on a moisture farm. Anakin gurgles along with her, like he’s listening, and though Shmi knows he’s probably not, probably not doing anything more than copying the sound of her voice, she entertains the thought for a moment that this all means something to him. He fixed the mobile Shmi tried to make him when he was much younger than this, after all, or at least he seemed to. This could be something else Shmi could give to him. Something he could make of himself, if he ever got off of this awful planet. If he ever escaped slavery.

The other mechanic, a slave named Match, walks over to them. He has a sun-hardened face, creased with the years, a lifetime, of slavery. Shmi thinks she remembers learning that he was born here, on Tatooine, like many of the Hutts slaves. Like Anakin. He smiles softly at Anakin, who smiles hesitantly back.

“I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,” Match rasps in his unmistakable Outer Rim accent.

“This is Anakin,” Shmi says. Her accent still has traces of the home she left behind, the one she can’t remember, and of years and years speaking Huttese before she learned a word in Basic. “It’s okay, Ani. Match is our friend. Say hello.”

“Mama,” Anakin says instead, clutching onto the fabric of Shmi’s skirt.

“Shy?” Match wonders, still not looking at Shmi, but at Anakin.

“Sometimes, yes,” Shmi answers. Anakin looks between the two of them, seems to remember his tooth, and grabs Shmi’s skirt tighter. “Right now, he’s just cranky.”

“Oh?” Match says. Anakin is starting to fuss, pulling on Shmi’s skirt insistently.

“Yes,” Shmi says. “He’s teething.” Anakin, right on cue sticks his hand back into his mouth, and reaches his other hand up, smacking Shmi in the face trying to show her where he hurt. Match laughs. Of all the things to see in the desert, this is, by far, the most extraordinary in its mundanity.

“I watched him walk all the way over here from the slave quarters,” he says. “You seem surprised.”

“Yes,” Shmi says, pushing Anakin’s hand out of her face. “I…I haven’t seen him walk before. It’s the first time, and to walk so far…” Something heavy sinks into Shmi’s stomach, something cold and heavy and irreversible. “I missed his first steps.” She says it to herself, a whisper, a moment she will never get back. So much of his life, taken from both of them already, to miss this…Anakin won’t mind. Anakin will probably never know. But Shmi minds. Shmi minds more than she thought she would.

“Don’t take it too hard,” Match says quietly. “He walked to see you.”

Shmi looks up to see his eyes watching Anakin, almost hungry for such a small pleasure as a small child to sit in his lap, think the world, the galaxy, the whole universe of him. She wonders if he has children, and what happened to them. There’s only Anakin, and one little girl about seven now, and a very young baby, left on the moisture farm in terms of children. Shmi doesn’t know what the Hutts do with the children when they’re old enough to sell, but she knows that Gardulla doesn’t like to have them around. More trouble than their worth, especially on Tatooine, when surviving until the age of five is a miracle, to ten, a challenge. Anything could have happened to Match’s children. Anything could happen to Anakin.

“Don’t let the Hutts see him walking so soon,” Match says in low voice. Low enough to rattle the earth. “They’ll put him to work before he’s two years old.” He straightens up, and gives Anakin another smile. He offers Shmi a hand up, and she takes it gratefully, and they start the trek back to the slave quarters.

“He can protect himself,” Shmi says, and though Match seems skeptical, he doesn’t ask. Like most slaves on Tatooine, he believes in the Force, in the coming of a chosen one, who will lead the slaves all to freedom, that the Force sometimes looks out for special children born under Tatooine’s moons, like Anakin. The days are so long on Tatooine that a child born at night, with all the moons full, like Anakin was, is rare enough. Shmi thought she left those myths behind her a long time ago, but Anakin, her miracle, is here and healthy, and not as skinny as the other slave children –though he certainly eats less –and he’s walking and talking and he’s vibrant. Anakin is so vibrant that he can make the suns look dim, and if Shmi isn’t careful when she looks at him, she feels she could go blind. The other slaves see it too, and the Hutts. They all know her son is special. Match takes another look at Anakin perched on Shmi’s hip an smiles to himself.

“All the same,” he mutters under Anakin’s babbling –talking about, or maybe to, the vaporators as they disappear behind them. “You wouldn’t want anything to put out that light.”


	4. Apart

Shmi takes Anakin along with her when she goes to work, like she did when he was very young. Anakin will get up and walk to wherever Shmi is if he wants to be with her, so it’s better for everyone if she just takes him with her. He’s about two when he walks almost all the way from the moisture farm to Mos Espa one day when Shmi went to the space port for supplies, and he gets halfway before someone finds him, and brings him back to the slave quarters. He cries the whole way home.   
“I’m sorry,” says the woman who was supposed to be watching him. “He’s just so fast. He was off the farm before I even noticed he was gone.” Shmi couldn’t help but feel a little annoyed. There were only three or four children she had to look after, and she couldn’t manage one two year old. Anakin was making a habit out of walking away when he wasn’t supposed, and Shmi thought that warranted a little keener eye. Still, no other child ever caused quite so many problems as Anakin.   
“Anakin is…” Shmi pauses. Anakin’s connection to the Force is whispered about, but no one knows for sure. Shmi still claims that he has no father, but it doesn’t mean Anakin is a Jedi hidden in the desert of Tatooine. If Anakin was just a freak –miraculous –birth, a gift or a punishment of the Force it would be easier for all of them, especially Anakin, and if Shmi has anything to do with it, the other slaves will at least believe that’s all he is. Strange, but only for the circumstances for his birth. Otherwise, completely ordinary. Let the others speculate all they want about Shmi, if it would keep Anakin safe. “A handful,” Shmi decides.   
But Shmi also decides the best way to keep Anakin out of trouble is to keep him with her as much as possible, and most of Shmi’s work is repairing and maintaining the machinery on the moisture farm, and Anakin seems to enjoy it, so there’s no harm done. He’s quiet as long as he’s with Shmi, and happy. He has no idea he is a slave, no idea that someone owns him, could take him from Shmi without a second thought. He watches Shmi work, talks to her and the other mechanics and farmers and droids who all stand in the suns all day long. He makes the others smile including the droids, except for some of the less sentient one –and one or two of the more sentient one who find him annoying.   
By the time he’s two-and-a-half, Shmi is pretty sure Anakin could take apart a vaporator and put it back together again in two hours. He looks over Shmi’s shoulder while she works, and once he knows the names of all the parts inside the machinery, he tugs on Shmi’s sleeves and points. “Mama, that one,” he says.   
Shmi wipes the sweat out of her eyes. “Which one, Ani?”   
“This one,” Anakin says, stepping up closer to the vaporator, putting both his hands on it. Just a cog that had come loose. Anakin takes it out and hands it to Shmi. “This one. It’s wrong.”   
Shmi replaces it and laughs. Shmi had been looking for the problem for fifteen minutes before Anakin found it. She wipes the grease off of Anakin’s hands and her own. “Thank you, Ani,” she says.   
Anakin starts working on the broken down droids not long after. At first, it’s simple things. Reattaching body parts that more or less just snap in, but before long, Anakin –who can barely speak to anyone besides Shmi –could build a droid from scratch, can and does rewire droids whose breakdown is not caused by the wear and tear of the environment. He can understand the binary of the droids, and speaks back to them like they’re people, and they start to come to Anakin before any of the other mechanics that live or work on the farm. It gives Anakin something to do while Shmi works, at least. Something to keep him occupied and distracted instead of just looking out into the desert for twelve –sixteen –hours a day, creating little sandstorms with the Force.   
But the Hutts catch on. When one of Gardulla’s overseers first comes to meet Anakin Shmi is terrified that’s what he’s there to sell him. Anakin is friendly. He’s never met a Hutt. He doesn’t even know that he’s a slave. All he’s ever known was this moisture farm, and Shmi. Everyone here is a slave; it’s just the farm and the slave quarters out here. A few times during the harvest, they have overseers or other slaves come to collect the water. The only other time the Hutts send someone out here is if they think the slaves are getting too comfortable, or if they think they’re stealing water. Or if they need to cut costs.   
“What’s your name?” the Hutt asks  
“Ani,” Anakin answers, looking at Shmi, who’s standing behind the Hutt, watching carefully. He’s two and a half speaking confidently. “I’m two.” He holds up two fingers for the overseer.   
The Hutt grunts and pulls a broken mouse droid out of his satchel. “I heard you can fix things,” he says, hands Anakin the droid. “Can you fix this?”  
Anakin takes it eagerly, and the overseer hands him some tools. “Yeah,” Anakin hums. “I can fix it.” And he does. In an hour, Anakin has taken apart and put the droid back together, and it sweeps across the room. Anakin beams at the overseer and at Shmi. “I fixed it!” he announces to the room. “It goes now.”   
“Remarkable,” the Hutt humphs. He picks up the droid, stuffs it back into his satchel, and leaves without another word.   
***  
The next week the overseer comes back early in the morning, and takes Anakin out of bed –right out of Shmi’s arms. The whole room wakes up, with Anakin’s screaming. A few pairs of shoes tumble across the room on their own, and Anakin is squirming around in the overseer’s arms, reaching towards Shmi, and Shmi is frozen in place, suddenly awake and alert and looking at Anakin being carried away from her. She can’t move. She knows what she would do if she could, can see herself rising out of bed, taking Anakin in her arms and bashing the overseer’s skull in –and then running, running, running. Far away, into the desert, to Mos Espa, to Mos Eisley, away from Tatooine.   
But no –the chips. They would kill her before they even made it off the property, and if they didn’t kill Anakin too, they would sell him for sure, maybe take him from Tatooine, or to Jabba, or somewhere else. Somewhere he would be hurt, where he would die. Shmi doesn’t move. She can’t move. She can’t even breathe, and all the while Anakin screams and screams and screams.   
It’s one of the other slaves –Match, who had children of his own once –who speaks first. “What are you doing?” he demands. Anakin belongs to all of them here. The overseer ignores him, trying to get a better grip on Anakin. “What are you doing?”   
Finally, the overseer manages to hold Anakin tight enough that he’s not going to drop him. He’s still screaming –Mama! Mama! Mama! –and Shmi is staring at him, trying to catch his eye, wordlessly trying to promise him everything is fine. The overseer turns to Match, who has found all the courage Shmi has lost, and kicks him.   
Shmi stands, suddenly, towards Match. Helps him to his feet, and faces the Hutt. “My son,” Shmi insists, reaching towards Anakin, grabbing his hand. Anakin quiets, his face red and wet with tears. “What are you doing with my son?” The overseer kicks Shmi in the shin too and she collapses on the ground. Her leg is still throbbing when she looks up to see Anakin squirming again, screaming louder.   
“No!” he yells. “No! No! Mama!” The shoes that were tumbling around the room earlier fly up, hit the walls. The overseer and the others duck out their way. One hits the overseer square in the back –one of Match’s boots, big and heavy. A few narrowly miss the others, but they all stay clear of Shmi. The overseer grips Anakin tighter and carries him out the door away from Shmi. When the door shuts behind them, the shoes fall to the ground and Shmi stares at where he son was only moments ago, her heart sinking.   
She can think of nothing but her son screaming. She can still hear him outside, and she doesn’t dare try to go after him. Match squats next to her, his hand heavy on her shoulder. “Shmi,” he whispers. “I’m so sorry.” She looks at him, his face crumpled, defeated, worn. He offers her a hand up and she takes it, wiping the few tears she wasn’t able to stop from her face. Shmi tries not to think about where they’re taken Anakin, how she may never see him again. How Anakin probably will not remember her. How foolish she was to think she could give Anakin anything other than this life, a life of slavery, of loneliness. She wants to follow him, but the sounds of his cries are drowned out by the sounds of heavy wind –of sand hitting the walls full force. A sandstorm. She hopes the overseer will find shelter until Anakin cries himself out, until the storm is over. She can feel the eyes of the others watching her, watching the door, watching their shoes to see if they are going to fly around some more on their own.   
They wait in silence until the sandstorm dies down, and then they all make their way to their jobs for the day. No overseer comes out to make sure where they need to be, but they’re all so shaken –and Shmi is secretly hopeful that at the very next second, she’ll see the overseer coming back with Anakin in his arms –that they don’t know what else to do. Match stays by Shmi’s side as they make the rounds across the farm. He doesn’t say a word until it’s nearly dark and there’s no sight of Anakin or anyone else for that matter.   
“I lost my children, too,” he says. It’s so quiet Shmi doesn’t think she’s meant to hear it. “And my wife. She tried to run when they were sold, but she…” Match swallows hard. He’s looking right at Shmi, remembering. “Dead.” He finishes haltingly. “And the children, no better off. They took them all, split them up. I’ll never see them again.” Match shakes his head, squeezes Shmi’s hand. “I’m so sorry about Anakin.”   
Shmi fights her tears, struggles to speak past the lump in her throat. “He’s strong.” Match quirks an eyebrow. “He will be fine.”   
Match laughs a little and starts walking back towards the slave quarters.   
“What?” Shmi asks.   
“Your little guy one time walked all the way to Mos Espa,” he says. “I don’t think the Hutts know what they’re in for.”   
Shmi laughs too. The thought of Anakin stumbling across the desert from Force knows where back to find her doesn’t make her feel any better. But it is still funny to think of the Hutts in over their heads with a two year with the Force. Strong enough to disrupt the footwear of a small room, strong enough to cause a sandstorm.   
She tries not to hope too much that Anakin will walk right back to her, and he’ll be in her arms by the morning.   
***  
It’s two days –two more long, horrible days before Anakin is returned to her. She is sore and tired and afraid. Every part of her mind that isn’t occupied by work is consumed by Anakin. She can’t take it, not knowing if he is okay. She’s torn, when she lays down to sleep, whether she’s too tired to fight sleep or too worried to let it come.   
She does sleep, and then, Anakin is returned to her. It’s early in the morning, and he’s deposited back in the slave quarters with much less ceremony than he was taken. Shmi wakes to Anakin nuzzling his way into her arms, burying his head into her shoulder. He’s shaking, and Shmi’s heart thumps loudly in her chest when she realizes what is happening. She gathers him closer, kisses his head. She’s shaking too, but he seems to be okay. He’s okay. Anakin’s okay.   
Shmi sits up, looks around the room. The overseer is back standing in the doorway. The first rays of sun are glinting through the door. “He stays for now,” he says and slams the door shut behind him. Out of sight.   
“Anakin,” Shmi sighs. Three days of worry and grief come rushing out of her. Anakin lifts his head to look at her and she takes every inch of him in. Small, fragile-looking thing, with bright blue eyes brimming with tears. He has bruises on his arms and legs where he struggled against the overseer, and one right under his eye. Shmi brushes it gingerly, but Anakin doesn’t react. He stares at Shmi, crying.   
“Mama,” he sobs.   
Shmi hugs him close again, his heartbeat strong and steady against hers. “Are you all right, Ani?” she asks when Shmi calms down and Anakin stops shaking so much.   
“Yes, Mama,” Anakin answers. “They hurt me,” he says, pressing the bruise on his face. “I was bad. They hurt me.”   
Shmi brushes her lips to the spot under his eye, and to the spots on his arms and legs where bruises are forming and fading. “All better,” she breathes.  
Anakin shakes his head. “No, Mama,” he says. “Not all better. Again.” Shmi kisses his bruises again. With each kiss she is more and more grateful for how warm, how alive Anakin is. How real and solid he is in her arms. How he clings to her. How he falls asleep in her lap.   
“How about now, Ani?” she asks. “All better?”  
Anakin nods. “Your turn,” he says.   
“I’m not hurt, Ani,” she tells him. He’s half-asleep, but he has a determined glint in his eye.  
Anakin kisses Shmi on the cheek and wraps his arms around her neck, resting his head on her shoulder before whispering “All better,” and falling asleep.   
Shmi lays down, Anakin heavy on her chest. The other slaves get up around her. A few cry out, surprised, overjoyed, at Anakin’s return. No one says anything, except Match, who comes over, runs a hand over Anakin’s head, and mutters –this time really to himself –“May the Force be with you, little one.”   
Anakin and Shmi sleep on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Keep an eye out for the next chapter, June 28. (Or not that day, because I have a final, but whatever)


	5. Slaves

Boonta Eve is a big holiday on Tatooine for the slaves and the Hutts alike. It is the one day a year that everyone has a day to themselves. But the weeks leading up to the Classic are as hot, as long, and as tiresome as any other. Still, there is an air of excitement around the slave quarters. Nothing but pod-races in their future.

On Boonta Eve, Shmi takes Anakin by the hand. He is old enough now to attend the festivities. When Shmi was younger she loved the pod-races, but since Anakin was born, she's enjoyed the reprieve. It's meant a quiet few days to herself and her son. Quality time, her time –something that Shmi doesn't have a lot of. But now –Anakin, just about three, has been talking to Match about the pod-races.

"Boonta Eve," Match says to Anakin while they work on the vaporators. "It's the best day of the year! The Hutts give us the day to ourselves!"

"No work?" Anakin asks.

"That's right," Match says. "No work! All the big kids go to the pod-races on Boonta Eve. It's exciting, Ani," he says. "Fast, dangerous. The pods smash into each other, and sometimes there are even explosions!"

All Anakin can talk about after that is the pod-races. And so Shmi takes him. She takes him on a crowded speeder, crammed between Match and the others, and walk into Mos Espa. It's the one day of the year that no one looks at her, treats her and her son like slaves. It's too crowded and everyone in too high spirits to notice whether the family they are rubbing elbows with are slave or free. Shmi clutches Anakin's hand as she drags him through the crowds into the arena. Far away –too far away to really see much of anything, even the big screen projecting the race –with the rest of Tatooine's lower class. She can see Gardulla sitting in one of the boxes with her cronies. Tatooine's elite filter in late, drunk, and rowdy. The rest of the crowd crams into the bleachers, already sunburnt and tired, craning their necks to see over top of strangers' heads. Anakin rests his head against Shmi's arm as they wait for the race to start.

There's a horn call, and a shuffling in the seats as people turn to see Jabba enter. The commentators announce the pods and the entire audience gets to their feet. Anakin stands on the bench between Shmi and Match but the only view he has is the back of the person in front of him. "Mama," he cries. "Mama I can't see."

Before Shmi can react, Match picks him up and swings him onto his shoulders. "How's that, Ani?"

"Thanks, Match," Anakin says, laughing with delight. "I can see everything from up here!" He looks down at Shmi. The sun is right behind his head, and it hurts to look at him. "Mama!" he laughs. "Mama I'm taller than you!"

"Not yet, Ani," Shmi says, but Anakin puts his hand on top of her head just to prove his point

"Yes, I am, see?" he says. He looks over top the crowd, across the arena and the dessert. "Mama," he says again, craning his neck. "I can see our house from here."

"Can you?" Shmi asks, watching Anakin watch the crowd. Match watches the pods on the screen with great interest, and he points out this year's favorite, tells him about how he's won the Classic every year.

"There's a new favorite this year though," Match says. And he points him out to Anakin. Shmi watches him too. She tries not to think about what the others around them must think. A normal looking family, some moisture farmers or traders, or something, out to enjoy the holiday. The one day no one asks anything from anyone else. Her heart aches to think of it –to think of the life she and Anakin would never have, the life Match himself must have thought of so many times in his life. Anakin's hands land in Match's hair and he looks right at home as the pods start up and the race commences. She knows that tomorrow or the next day -depending on how the race goes –they will go back to being slaves, but for now, it's nice to pretend.

***

Sebulba ousts the incumbent winner of the Boonta Eve Classic, and it's a tough time to be a gambler or the property of a gambler on Tatooine. Anakin and Shmi don't know, at first. Anakin falls asleep before the race is even over. But the next morning when Shmi and Anakin are out working on the vaporators, an overseer comes to round them up. The same one who took Anakin only months before takes him now, but Anakin is older and Shmi is surprised but not shocked or terrified like she once was, so Anakin looks at her, and though he looks like he's about to cry, he does not. He does not struggle or squirm or speak. He places binders on Anakin's hands and feet and drops him unceremoniously to the ground and then walks over to Shmi and stops. "You and the kid are coming with me," he says. "Gardulla bet you on the podrace. Thought the kid'd be good luck. Guess she was wrong." He places Shmi in binders too, shackles her to Anakin. Shmi doesn't think about where they're going because at least for the moment it seems that they are going together.

***

It's not until the overseer throws them into an already crowded shipping container that Anakin starts to cry. "Mama," he sobs. "Where are we going?"

"Hush, Ani," Shmi says. The binders are still on, and they're still shackled together. Shmi is thankful, because it means she and Anakin can't get separated while on board, but it's hard to maneuver Anakin into her lap like this. "It's going to be okay, Ani," she lies, combing her fingers through his hair. Anakin twists himself awkwardly in her lap to bury his face in her chest. It's awkward and uncomfortable, the binders too tight around her wrists. Eventually Anakin falls asleep, and then later, much later, the shipping container starts to move. The people inside jostle around a bit, look up. Shmi isn't the only mother on board –some are alone, some with children –and there are children younger than Anakin here too. Alone. One small girl cries to herself in the corner and Shmi aches to comfort her. To lie to her too. Promise her that everything will be all right, and have her believe it, just for a moment.

After a while, the shipping container stops. Some slavers come on board. They shove some of the people down the ramp roughly and shove more on. A boy, about seventeen, falls next to Shmi and Anakin. He's young, but his face is lined with the hardships his short life has brought. Shmi doesn't know, but she can imagine. The boy leans against the wall of the shipping container, inspects the others with a smirk, and closes his eyes.

***

Anakin wakes up and he doesn't remember where he is. He looks up at Shmi and looks around. "Mama," he whispers, with tears in his eyes. "Where are we?"

Shmi purses her lips. What kind of answer could she give Anakin? Where were they? "We're…" she says slowly, thinking. "We're moving."

"Why?" Anakin asks. "Where are we going?"

Shmi thinks. But she doesn't have answers that Anakin will like. Shmi thinks and Anakin looks up at her expectantly.

"You're going on an adventure," says a quiet voice from beside them.

Anakin whips his head around to see the young man who is sitting beside them. He's leaning forward, his elbows resting on his knees to get a better look at Anakin in the dim light. Anakin looks at him surprised. Shmi is surprised too. No one is talking to each other on the whole shipping container. Just a few family members trying to keep each other calm.

"Do you like adventures, little man?" he asks. Anakin nods. "Me too," he says, "that's why I'm here." He's lying. He's wincing with every word like it hurts to breathe, but he's smiling at Anakin like getting hauled onto a shipping container to be sold across Tatooine or across the galaxy was the adventure of a lifetime. "What's your name, little man?" Anakin looks up at Shmi nervously. "My name is Abric," the boy offers.

"Anakin," Anakin says quietly.

"Anakin," Abric echoes. "Well, Anakin, I'll tell you about the adventure I'm going to have. Do you wanna hear about that?"

Anakin nods eagerly, leaning closer to Abric.

"Well…" he says. "I'm here because I fight bad guys. That's why they put these binders on me," he holds up his hands to show Anakin. Anakin gasps and holds up his hands too. "You too, huh?" Abric laughs. "I bet that's why you and your mama are here, too, right?" Abric looks up at Shmi for a second. His face crumples for a half a second, and then he beams, looking back at Anakin. "I'm sure you're a hero, right, Anakin?"

"Yeah," Anakin says, caught up in Abric's story.

"Well," Abric continues. "After they take us to Mos Espa I'm going to leave Tatooine and fight some more bad guys."

"Can I come?" Anakin asks, and Shmi doesn't know whether to laugh or cry. Abric will never leave Tatooine, except maybe to work on some mining planet. Maybe that's where he's going.

Abric smiles sadly. "I don't know, Anakin," he says thoughtfully. "I think you have to ask your mama."

Anakin turns to Shmi. "Mama…?" he says, but then he stops, looks back at Abric. "Can she come?" he asks.

"No, Ani, I can't go," Shmi answers.

"Why not?"

"Who's going to protect Tatooine if your mama leaves?" Abric answers for her. Anakin nods seriously.

"Okay," Anakin says. "I can't go with you," he says. "I have to stay with my mom."

Abric rubs his chin. "That's right you do," Abric says. "I think Tatooine needs both of you, little man. Stay here and protect your home, you got that?"

"Where will you go?" Anakin asks.

"Hmm," Abric hums. "Everywhere, I think," he decides. "Maybe when you're grown up, I'll come back and take you with me. Then you can have adventures in the whole galaxy, not just on Tatooine. Would you like that?"

"Can my mom come then?" Anakin asks.

Abric smiles a little. "Yeah," he says. "I think your mama could definitely come with us when you're grown up."

***

Anakin talks to Abric for the rest of the trip across Tatooine, picking up slaves, dropping them off, until they arrive at Mos Espa. ("You ever been to Mos Espa, Anakin?" Abric asks. Shmi laughs, thinking about the walk Anakin took about a year ago.) And then, the remaining slaves are herded off the shipping container, and into a mass crowd. It's almost as crowded as it was on Boonta Eve, but they're all slaves. All in binders and shackles. Anakin stumbles down the ramp and grabs onto Abric's leg. Shmi scoops him up. Anakin is shaking with fear.

"Be brave, Ani," Shmi whisper to him. "We're heroes, remember." Anakin nods and lays his head against Shmi's shoulder.

"I'm brave, Mama," he whispers. "But I don't feel good."

No. He wouldn't. Shmi isn't Force sensitive, and the fear in the alleyway the shipping container let them out is palpable. Shmi doesn't know how to help him with this. The Jedi would teach Anakin about the Force, rescue him from a life where he is bought and sold for the entertainment of their masters. "It's okay, Ani," Shmi assures him. "We'll be in a new home soon enough," she says. Though she can only hope they're together. Anakin's eyes start to water and Shmi pushes that thought out of her mind. One less terrified soul in the crowd would do Anakin some good. "Focus on me, Ani," Shmi insists, as tears start to fall from Anakin's eyes. Her heart breaks for him, a cold pit in her stomach whispers that this may well be the last time she sees Anakin, and Anakin cries harder, trying to quiet his cries in Shmi's shoulder. They're jostled a little by the slave traders watching them from the sidelines. "We're going to okay, Ani," she whispers. "We're going to stay together." She can barely hold him, and walking in such a discouraged crowd with her hands and feet still bound. But she won't let him go. These slavers would take Anakin from her over her dead body. What would Anakin do without her? What would she do without Anakin?

They stop, and some slaves are sent one way, some filtered the other. Anakin, Shmi, and Abric stay where they are, and their shackles are taken off. There's nowhere to run, all the traders are armed to the teeth. Abric bares his threateningly at the slaver who releases him, and though he doesn't move, Shmi can see his muscles tense.

"Try anything and your dead, sleemo," the slaver growls.

"Reunite me with my family, see if I care," Abric snarls back, displaying canines that are too sharp to be human. Shmi didn't notice before. The slaver whacks him in the face with the end of his blaster. Her heart stops for a moment, wonders what Abric is planning.

After the crowd clears a little more, they're led a little further along, into the main streets of Mos Espa. Out in the open, Abric watches the crowds carefully. As they pass one of the space ports, Abric elbows the slaver next to in the gut, grabs his blaster and takes off towards the ship. Anakin watches him with wide eyes. Every slave holds their breath. They all know what's going to happen next, even if Anakin does not.

Before he gets halfway to the ship he's dead.

Before Shmi can cover Anakin's eyes, tell him to look away. She knows he wouldn't have listened anyway. He starts to call out to him a half a second before it happens. He's crying before the slaver even presses the detonator. He's not the only one. There are children who were surprised by the blast, and civilians who were out early in the morning before the day got too hot. Shmi is fighting tears. It would do no good, it would not bring Abric back, would not get him off Tatooine, it would not remove the bomb inside him, or the bomb inside her, or Anakin, souring any chance at escape they might have had.

Shmi wipes blood off of Anakin's face, steps over Abric's hand that fell right in front of her path. "Mama," Anakin sobs, looking at where Abric was standing before. "What happened?"

But Shmi doesn't know how to explain this to Anakin. She thinks of the way Abric made him smile before. But that kind of explanation would get them in trouble, get them separated at the very least.

"Mama, where is he?" Anakin asks, insistent.

"I'll tell you later, Ani," she promises. "Okay?" Anakin nods, still crying. The slavers watch them irritably, warily, but Shmi doesn't look at them. They don't try to separate them or tell Shmi to make Anakin be quiet. She just stares straight ahead, watching the back of the person in front of her, and tries to forget Abric's face the moment before he died.

***

Hours and hours later they are sold. They stand in the middle of Mos Espa during the hottest part of the day before Toydarian who bought them shows up. He seems more disheveled than every Toydarian Shmi has met, and though she's only met a handful in her life, it's saying a lot. He owns a junkyard, reselling scrap to stranded star pilots for more than they can reasonably afford. But he tells Shmi he's looking for someone to deal with customers and he's heard that Anakin has a knack for machines, and he didn't pay a thing for the two of them. Won them from Gardulla. And he gives them a place all to their selves in a section of the city inhabited solely by slaves. As long as they showed up at the junkyard on time –before the suns rise –and didn't leave until he said so, they wouldn't have a problem. He didn't care what they did on their own time, as long as it didn't cost him any money.

***

In spite of Watto's promise, she knows he has every right to break it. He could come in, take them away, sell them. But for tonight, Shmi tries to pretend that things would get better for them from now on. Pretend that Anakin didn't see a man –a boy –get blown up in front of his eyes. But Anakin cannot let it go.

"The people who own us are bad people, Anakin," Shmi says. "It is not right to own another being. Abric tried to leave, so that he could be free, but…" Shmi swallows. "That is the cost of freedom in our world. It's not right, it's bad. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Mama," Anakin answers. He is sunburned from today, and his hair is sticking to his forehead in sweaty clumps.

"Abric was very brave, Ani," Shmi says. "And it's important to be brave, but you have to promise me something, yes?"

"Yes, Mama," he says again.

"Don't be so brave that you die," Shmi says. "Do you promise me? Freedom, Ani, it's not worth dying for."

Anakin nods, and Shmi's heart sinks. She wants to keep Anakin alive, no matter what, but she feels selfish, wrong for suggesting it. Shmi believes that one day Anakin will bring them –all of them –their freedom, but he's only three. Not now. No use for him to have ideas about dying now.

And besides, Shmi thinks, all the slaves free in the galaxy wouldn't mean anything if her son was dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This will update about every week and a half. I plan to have the next chapter finished next weekend (July 8-9), and I hope to have a little more time, because I just finished the first half of my summer classes, but if not, two weeks at the latest for the next chapter. Also, I literally finished writing this an hour ago, so in spite of it being pretty thoroughly proofread there's probably still typos.


	6. Dreams

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back again to deface star wars canon some more. Check out the ending of the chapter to hear something wild i made up about the force

It is not long after Anakin and Shmi are sold to Watto that the nightmares start. He complains of being tired and that he cannot sleep, and he struggles to stay awake while working in Watto's junkyard. The first time Watto catches him asleep, he's whipped for it. It's the first time Anakin is beaten, and he cries. He doesn't understand. All Shmi wants to do is help, but she doesn't know how to make his nightmares go away or help him sleep through the night. At first, she thinks it's the change. It's the first time Anakin has slept in his own bed in his whole life. It's nice for Shmi, and for Anakin, the way they can pretend they have their own space, their own lives, but it's tough for Anakin. After that first night, in fact for a few weeks, Anakin climbed back into Shmi's bed, and at first, Shmi loved the way it felt for Anakin to be close. Sometimes she would wake and wonder what had happened to him, before she remembered. He was fine, in the other room. Asleep. She could feel him, as if he were a part of her.

But the nightmares don't stop after more than a year. And they're continuous. More than a year they've been Watto's, and lived in Mos Espa, and by all accounts they've adjusted to their new lives. But Anakin falls asleep during the day when he's supposed to be working, and can't sleep at night, and he's becoming self-conscious. He doesn't want Shmi to worry -worry about the nightmares, worry that Watto will punish him for falling asleep, even though most boys his age, even slaves wouldn't be working the way Watto works him yet -and so he tries to hide it from her. She still knows. She wakes with him, even if he doesn't get her, listens to him breathe heavily. She tries to go to him, a few times, but unless he's crying, really upset and scared, he just says: "I'm sorry, Mama. I didn't wanna wake you up."

But this night Shmi is sound asleep. It's not too hot and they're safe for the night. On the moisture farm they had to worry about getting caught in the storms, or the Tusken Raiders, or off-worlders coming to cause trouble for the Hutts. Here in Mos Espa, even in the slave quarters, they just have to worry about themselves. When she wakes, she notices how quiet it is, and thinks that maybe Anakin is finally sleeping through the night. Maybe he's finally overcome whatever has been bothering him. Maybe he's grown out of the nightmares, and Shmi can stop worrying that there's something more insidious going on.

There's a hiccup of a sob beside her ear, and her heart sinks. Sitting up, she looks over to where Anakin is standing, barefoot and tired looking. He clutches the stuffed bantha Shmi made for him for his first birthday (a little gift Match had delivered on a supply run to Mos Espa a few weeks after they were sold –he seemed relieved to see that they were okay, alive, even happier than they were before) to his chest. "Ani?" Shmi says. "What's wrong?"

"Mama," he says. "I had another bad dream."

"Another?" Shmi sighs. Too much to ask for her son to sleep through the night. He climbs into her bed without another word and lies down next to her. Shmi runs her hands through his fine blond hair.

"Can I tell you what it was about?" he asks quietly.

"Of course, Ani," Shmi says softly. "You can tell me anything." Anakin hiccups again and turns over in bed to get more comfortable. He kicks her by accident, and his feet are ice cold. He's shivering. Shmi maneuvers around him to get a pull the blanket from underneath of him and drapes it over his trembling body. She brushes a kiss against his forehead. "Tell me, Ani."

"You," he says quietly. "I don't want you to die."

"I won't die, Ani," Shmi promises, her blood running cold. "Is that what happens in your dreams?"

"Yes, Mama," he says. "And I dream about other things too."

"Like what?" she asks, though she isn't sure she wants to know.

"Me," he says, even quieter. "You don't love me anymore. You wanna hurt me." His voice quivers. "You love me right, Mama?"

"Of course I love you," she says. "I would never do anything to hurt you."

Anakin nods. "I know, Mama," he says. "I'm sorry. I'm just scared."

Shmi lays her head next to Anakin's and gently tips his chin up to meet his eyes. "Don't be sorry, Ani," she says. "You are allowed to be afraid. But you don't have to be afraid of me. You are my whole heart." She takes Anakin's hand and places it over her heart so he can feel its steady pulse. She places her hand over Anakin's heart. "My whole world."

"You're my whole heart too, Mama," he mumbles, his eyes drooping, and his breathing steadying out.

He sleeps for a little while, but he wakes up several more times throughout the night. Each time Shmi wakes with him, draws him closer to her. He wakes up shaking, trying to be as quiet and still as possible. It's too much for Shmi to bear, but she doesn't do anything but be quiet and strong. Hold Anakin in her arms until he quiets again.

Once he wakes up and whispers for Shmi in the dark, and Shmi is right there, holding him still. "Mama," he says. "Watto's gonna hurt me tomorrow." The room is quiet and grows quieter. "I don't want Watto to hurt me."

She wants to say he won't, that she will protect him, but she knows that she can't. She knows that Anakin might fall asleep tomorrow when he's supposed to be working, and she knows that Watto has hurt Anakin in the past for doing just that. And Shmi can only do her best to keep Anakin from being hurt. Sometimes, it means letting him take a few lashes so she can be around the next night hold him while he sleeps. "Why do you think that, Ani?" she asks, and her voice is nearly lost in the thick air of the room.

"I saw it," he says. "In my dream. Bad things happen in my dreams."

"They might not happen in real life," Shmi says.

"But they do," Anakin sobs. "Mama, my bad dreams happen in real life."

And what could Shmi say to that? The Force showed her Anakin before he was born, and she's heard stories about Jedi and witches who could tell the future. She's met her fair share. But Anakin –dreaming of Shmi's death and worse. She tries to reassure him but her voice is lost in the magnitude of the lie. Instead she says, "Just try to sleep." And he does, for a few more hours until sunrise.

His dream about Watto comes true. Shmi is in the junkyard when she and Watto spot Anakin asleep on a pile of broken droid parts. Watto spots him a half a second before Shmi does and he grunts irritably and flutters over to him. He yanks Anakin up by the collar of his shirt, and shakes him awake.

"Hey!" he grumbles. Anakin blinks groggily as Watto drops him roughly back on the ground. His lip trembles but he doesn't cry. He slaps Anakin across the face. "You don't sleep when you supposed to be workin' for me, boy?" Anakin nods. He smacks Anakin again. "Teach you some respect."

"Yes," Anakin mumbles. Watto raises his fat little hand again. "Master," he quickly adds.

"Get back to work," Watto grunts and he flies away, back to whatever Watto did while Anakin repaired his junk and Shmi cleaned his house.

Watto, Shmi thinks bitterly, as she picks her way across the cluttered rows of scrap metal and half-put-together droids towards Anakin, doesn't have enough patience to deal with human four year olds. She doesn't share her feelings with Anakin. Shmi only picks him up and brings him outside into the sunlight so she can look at where Watto hit him a little more clearly. He must not have hit Anakin very hard –there's not even a red mark where his hand met Anakin's face –but Anakin still crying, so Shmi kisses his cheek.

"My dream," Anakin says. He's trembling again, but it's a particularly hot day on Tatooine, and he's drenched in sweat. "It came true."

"That's Watto's fault, not yours," Shmi grumbles, readjusting the collar of Anakin's shirt. Anakin smiles up at Shmi. He looks exhausted, but Shmi thinks he's still too shaken to fall asleep again. She wipes the tear tracks from Anakin's face. "Will you be okay, Ani?"

"Yes, Mama," he says very seriously. "I'm okay."

The silence is heavy, and Shmi can feel Anakin thinking about his other dreams, the ones about her dying, about her hurting Anakin, but she doesn't want to bring them out into the open, doesn't want Anakin to know his dreams bother her, upset her, worry her. They don't. They're just dreams. One of them should believe it, and it should be Shmi. That's the way the whole galaxy works. Little boys have bad dreams, and their mothers tell them that there's nothing to be afraid. That dreams pass in time. That she is there to protect him from the krayt dragons that lived under his bed.

If only.

Anakin's dreams don't stop. He tells Shmi about them. They become more vivid, but less agonizing. He starts dreaming of other worlds. Of other stars.

"I dreamed of a whole world made of water," he tells Shmi, his hand small in Shmi's as they walk through the streets of Mos Espa to Watto's junkyard. The suns are rising behind them. "Is that real? Can we go there?"

Shmi laughs lightly. "I have no idea if there are such worlds," she answers truthfully. "But when I was a girl, I used to dream about travelling through the galaxy."

"Can we go there, Mama?" Anakin asks again.

"Maybe one day," Shmi answers. That's what she dreams of now. Not of the stars. Just of Anakin. Giving him everything he needs, everything he desires. "When we leave Tatooine, would you like to go to a waterworld first?"

Anakin nods, looking up at Shmi excitedly. "Yes, Mama," he says enthusiastically. "And a world with lots of plants, and then we can come home."

"Back to Tatooine?" Shmi asks. She considers him for a second, his feet kicking up clouds in the dusty streets. The square clay buildings that go on for miles, and then nothing but sand. It's all Anakin has ever known. The suns beating wildly against his skin. Tatooine would never be Shmi's home. It may always be Anakin's, even if he longs to see the stars. "We don't have to come back here once we leave, you know?" Not that Shmi can envision a future away from this place. Even if Anakin can.

"But then, where will we sleep, Mama?" he asks like it's the most obvious thing in the world.

"With the stars," Shmi says to herself. Anakin stops and looks up at her, his eyes wide.

"You can sleep in space," he whispers.

"Of course, Ani," Shmi says. "You know, I've been off-world."

"Where the stars live?"

"Yes, where the stars live."

"Did you sleep there?" he asks. Startled by it. "Wasn't it loud?"

"No," Shmi says, taking Anakin's hand again, and walking. The suns are almost up, and more and more people are crowding into the street. She's more concerned with losing Anakin in the crowd than being late for Watto. "It's quiet. Just you and the starship, and your family."

Anakin chews thoughtfully on his lip. "But the stars…" he hums.

"What about them?" Shmi asks, amused.

"They're loud," he says matter-of-factly. "They give me bad dreams. I don't think I could sleep in space."

Shmi laughs again, and then they get jostled by hurried shopper on their way to buy whatever produce is available. "I'm sure you could, Ani," she promises. "We'll just have to see." She says it more like a prayer than a promise. A hope that maybe one day she would hear the stars the way Anakin does.


	7. Sons

Mostly, Watto is fair to them. He's not overly cruel, and Shmi has a lot more time to herself than she ever expected. She watches closely over Anakin –Watto’s prized possession –while he works, little hands moving deftly around intricate machinery. As Anakin's knowledge grows, Watto trusts him with more and more complicated projects, brings him to pod races to work in the pit. Once, a pod crashes right in front of Anakin. Shmi watches from a few feet behind him. Debris from the pod explodes around him, but Anakin seems not to notice and strains to see the other pods through the dust until Watto claps him on the back of his head, swearing at him to get to work fixing what he could of the pod –see if he could have it finish the race.  
  
Anakin is fascinated with the pod races. He asks Watto to bring him along, and it's pretty soon clear that Anakin –only five years old –is the most talented mechanic Watto will ever meet –and the cheapest –so Watto has Anakin build him his next pod for the Boonta Eve Classic. Watto watches over him, swears at him when he makes a mistake, but Shmi has never seen Anakin look happier in his life. When he and Shmi walk home for the day, Anakin talks Shmi's ear off about the newest addition to "the fastest pod ever" and Shmi doesn't think too hard about the poor soul whose going to have to try to fly the pod of the cheapest man she's ever met and her five year old son. She just listens, asks Anakin questions where she can (Shmi is an adept tinkerer herself, but even now Anakin's knowledge has surpassed hers).  
  
"Watto's gonna let me fly it, Mama," he tells her one day, and Shmi is sure she heard him wrong.  
  
"No he's not, Ani," Shmi says. "You're only five."  
  
"No, Mama," Anakin insists. "You can ask him. I am going to race against Sebulba in the Boonta Eve Classic."  
  
Shmi's heart drops heavily into her stomach. "Anakin," she says seriously. "You cannot."  
  
"I have to," he says. "Watto says I do. And..." Anakin looks up at her, squinting up at her like he has to tell her something he doesn't quite know how to say. "Mama, I just have to."  
  
There's a ringing in Shmi's ears and she just focuses on each step in front of her. If she thinks about anything else the earth beneath her will disappear, she'll lose her grip on Anakin's hand and him as they weave their way through the space port. "No, Anakin, you can't," she repeats adamantly. "It's too dangerous." No human has ever survived a podrace. And Anakin –extraordinary as he may be –is a child. He hasn't flown so much as a landspeeder, much less a pod –designed to be faster and more dangerous than anything for sky, space, or land travel.  
  
"I've been practicing with Watto," Anakin says. Shmi grips Anakin's hand tighter and pulls him along faster. She considers taking their chances and getting on one of the ships waiting in the port, flying wherever it takes them. It would be better –faster –than the death Anakin would suffer if he raced on Boonta Eve. Podracing without the politics was dangerous. Watto training him means that Watto is serious. Even if Anakin survives the race, entering the race alone could be enough of an upset to warrant his death. The violence surrounding the race grows with the betting pool, and Anakin is just a child, and he’s too young, too naïve, too anxious to fly to know that what he’s getting himself into is more than just a race.  
  
“I won’t let you,” Shmi insists. Her throat closes around the words, but she keeps her eyes forward, plowing through the crowd. Imagines again walking onto a ship before Watto even knows they’re gone. Imagines a galaxy where they are safe, where Anakin isn’t forced to fly. (If he’s being forced at all, Shmi doesn’t think –can’t think; she entertains for the first time that even once Anakin is free he’ll still be in danger –something about the look in his eyes when he talks about racing, like he’s hungry for it, makes her think that she’s fighting a losing battle. Anakin’s future will always be chasing the next thrill, the next adventure, and the idea of it gnaws at Shmi’s heart until she can barely stand it.)  
It turns out, there’s not much Shmi can do.  
  
Anakin wakes early on the morning of the race. Tatooine mornings, when the first sun rises and the sand is still cool, are pink and vibrant. It’s almost livable at this time in morning. The little native wildlife there is stirs with Anakin. It’s the only time Shmi has ever heard birdsong on Tatooine. Moisture farmers start to harvest what they can before the day gets too hot, traders set up their stands before the spaceports are mobbed with crowds trying to beat the heat. Today, that is everyone awake. A holiday like today means everyone –even most of the slaves –can get what sleep they can before the race. But Anakin is awake, sitting on his floor, tinkering with some parts Watto let him take home. Putting them together, taking them apart. Together again, apart. Together. Apart.  
  
Shmi finds him like this, on his knees with his beat up parts in his hands, bags under his eyes. “Ani,” Shmi sighs, kneeling next to him. “Are you nervous?”  
  
Anakin shakes his head. “No, Mama,” he mutters to his lap. “I’ve been practicin’. Watto says as long as I don’t crash, I can place.” But Anakin’s hands are shaking as he puts the parts back into place, takes them apart. Together. Apart. Anakin is nervous, and so is Shmi.  
  
“You won’t crash,” Shmi lies. A year ago she would have told him about the Force, how she can feel it around him, protecting him. How at the race last month the debris from the crashed pod flew everywhere, hit everyone but Anakin. But it’s too dangerous to have Anakin know. To have him learn to use it while he’s here, stuck on Tatooine. The Force can’t protect him from everything –not the Hutts, not Watto, not a stray blaster bolt or slug from the Sand People, and not from a determined opponent in a race. He might get cocky, or worse, he might try to fight back. A slave who fights is as bad as a slave who runs, and the Force can’t protect him from that either. From a chip in his body, set to detonate at Watto’s slightest inkling of trouble. “What are you making?” Shmi asks instead, pointing to the parts in Anakin’s hands.  
  
“Oh,” he says. Taking them apart. “I’m building a droid. For you.”  
  
“For me?” Shmi asks.  
  
“Yeah,” he answers. “For when you’re done taking care of Watto’s house, you don’t have to take care of this one.” Only the slightest hint of bitterness in his voice. “He’ll help you cook and clean. I’m gonna build him out of old parts.”  
  
“Oh, Ani,” says Shmi. “You don’t have to do that.”  
  
“You deserve it, Mom,” he says seriously, his hands still in his lap for a second. “You deserve…” His blue eyes grow dark and stormy for a second, and the air between them is too thick to breathe. But just for a second. Anakin breathes and so does Shmi. “Watto says if I place, he’ll give me some of the prize money. Then I can buy some of the parts for the droid.”  
  
“That’s great, Ani,” Shmi lies again. She tries to memorize how he looks, tries to keep the image of her son, blond and clear-eyed for her to remember (and the other image of her son grown up –tall and handsome and tired –an image she hopes means Anakin will make it through today, through the next ten years of his life; an image from her dreams before Anakin was born). She pushes the image –a nightmare, nothing more –of Anakin’s small, charred body, mangled among smoking machinery away. A nightmare Shmi has had every night since Anakin told her he was going to be racing. A best-case-worst-case scenario. Shmi forces a smile to her face and grabs Anakin’s hands. “I love you, Ani,” she says. “Please be careful.”  
  
“I will, Mom,” Anakin promises.

  
***  
Shmi stands behind the pit, shoulder to shoulder with the crowds who arrived early. She clutches a datapad to her chest and cranes her neck over the crowd, searching for Anakin, the only human among dozens of alien racers and crew members –races who were smarter, stronger, faster than any human could be, and much, much older than Anakin. The datapad would do her no good now –craning over the top of the crowd and competitors as they spilled into the arena and milled around like colonies of insects that lived in the most barren parts of the desert. She had a better chance seeing her tiny five year old son through the clouds of dust than a chance to spot him on the screen.  
Announcers advertise in garbled voices over the speakers –for food, places, things, Shmi will never even see –but Shmi barely hears any of it. Doesn’t see the advertisements flashing across the screen of her datapad. She needs to see Anakin again. She won’t be able to breathe until she does. Her heart skips a beat when she sees a glint of blond hair from below where the racers are gathered. For a second the crowd clears in front of her son and she can see him, looking into the crowd, looking for her.  
  
Jabba enters. The crowd rises but doesn’t quiet. The races are about to begin. The announcers begin to list off the program. Cheers for the favorites. Boos for the challengers.  
  
“And…” the announcer calls out in Basic. “We have a new entry!” He laughs nervously, and the crowd quiets imperceptibly. Just enough people stopping the conversation mid-sentence to hear the name of the new racer. “Human: Anakin Skywalker. Racing for Watto.” Anakin’s face, grimy already appears on the screen, Watto fluttering nearby. He catches sight of himself on one of the big holoprojector screens and turns to watch. He waves. Watto claps him on the back of the head and Anakin turns apologetically back to his pod. The crowd is startlingly quiet as Anakin and the other racers climb into their pods and pull up the starting line.  
  
“He’s just a kid!” someone beside her hisses. “This is a disgrace. He’ll be eaten alive. Literally!”  
  
Shmi swallows hard, watches the screen of her datapad intently, trying to tune out the crowd, the other racers. The nagging thoughts that Anakin wouldn’t make it. Anakin’s face and Anakin’s pod are still plastered onto every screen in the arena.  
  
The race starts with a roar of engines. Anakin’s sputters away in a cloud of dust. He lags behind for a second before he turns the first corner and he’s out of Shmi’s sight. Watto flutters back over to her side.  
  
“Let’s see if that boy of yours is actually worth anything,” Watto swears under his breath. Shmi grips the datapad tighter, her knuckles turning white. Focusing her vision on the screen, looking for Anakin in the sand billowing up around the pods, Shmi struggles to see through the red fog of rage. She could kill Watto for sending her son in this bloodbath.  
  
Anakin is a better flier than anyone –even Watto –was counting on. He surprises the announcers at every turn, dodging the other pilots carefully as they try to ram into him and knock him out of the race. He lasts an entire lap. Not as fast as the others, but his pod is barely scraped, he’s barely harmed. Shmi can see him grinning as he flies by.  
And then –another pod rams into the back of Anakin’s. The cameras focus on the collision. Anakin looks angry and confused, searching for the assailant. It could have been an accident, but Anakin takes after the pod that hit his. Gets close, knocks it off the track. Only the pod rights itself and speeds away from Anakin. And Anakin goes spinning off the track. Watto swears next to her, and Shmi realizes she hasn’t been breathing.  
  
“Anakin!” Shmi cries, over the cheers and groans of the crowd.  
  
“That kid is dead,” says a voice from behind her.  
  
Shmi turns to Watto, her heart beating wildly in her chest. “We have to go get him!” she cries. “Anakin is hurt!”  
  
Watto scowls. “And he ruined my pod,” he growls. “You two will pay for that!”  
  
“Please!” she feels hysterical. The noise around her is growing. Anakin hasn’t risen from the pod, which from here looks perfectly fine, just a little tangled, and without a pilot. _“_ He’s a _child. Please_.”  
  
But she can’t do anything. Watto doesn’t move, and the pods make it impossible for anyone to cross the track to see if Anakin is alright. It takes fifteen minutes before anyone gets a craft together to clean up the wreckage, and she makes Watto take her along. And fifteen more minutes until they reach the place where Anakin crashed. Thirty breathless minutes. The crowd thinks Anakin is dead. Shmi thinks she’s going to be sick.  
  
Anakin is squatting amid the wreckage. He looks a little dazed, he has a huge scrape running the length of his forehead, but otherwise, he looks no worse for wear. He looks like he’s trying to fix the pod from inside of it.  
  
“Anakin,” Shmi gasps, rushing over to him, plucking him from the wreckage. “Anakin, are you alright?”  
  
“Yeah, Mama,” he says, wrapping his arms around Shmi’s neck, but turning around to look at the pod. “I’m –Watto!” he calls, see Watto examining the wreckage. Shmi can only look at the gash on Anakin’s head, tries to remind herself that head wounds look worse than they are. It’s a lot of blood, but he’s fine. “I’m sorry, Master. I didn’t mean to.”  
Watto doesn’t say anything. It distresses Anakin. He tries to squirm out of Shmi’s arms, but Shmi doesn’t think she could let go if she tried. “Let me down, Mama,” he whines. Shmi does not. “Watto! Watto, I can fix it! I promise. I’m sorry.”  
  
Watto looks at Anakin sternly. “You better be able to, boy,” he says curtly and flies off with the pod.  
  
Anakin sighs, resting his head against Shmi’s chest, getting blood on her dress.  
  
“Are you okay, Ani?” Shmi presses again.  
  
“I didn’t win,” he says, confused.  
  
“No, Ani,” she says. “But you are alive.” Anakin can’t know how good it is to see him alive, have him warm against her chest, hot, sweaty, and bloody as he is. “You are alive,” she repeats like if she doesn’t remind herself then he’ll disappear right out of her arms. Her son. Her whole galaxy. She places him on the ground in front of her, rips off the bottom of her dress, and dabs some of the excess blood away from Anakin’s eyes. It’s in his bangs, his hair sticking to his face with blood and sweat. “Let’s go home, Ani,” Shmi says softly. “Get you cleaned up.”  
  
“No,” Anakin says softly, watching the pods as they come by. Another lap finished. “I wanna watch.”  
  
Anakin is determined, so Shmi sits in the sand next to Anakin on the wrong side of the track. Like this, the desert is quiet, peaceful. She could live on Tatooine, her suns beating down wildly every single day, if it was like this. The two of them. Her son brighter than both of Tatooine’s.


	8. Jedi

Anakin’s reputation grows and his name spreads through Mos Espa, and so starpilots who get stranded on Tatooine come to find Watto, and the small prodigy mechanic turned podracer he owns. Anakin charms them with his bright smile and his fanciful stories –the secret droid he’s building out of old parts, the podrace he survived against all odds. The pilots watch Anakin deftly repair parts that seemed beyond salvage. The pilots want nothing more than to impress Anakin back. They tell him stories of their travels throughout space.   
“I hear you’re the best pilot in the Outer Rim,” they say, dazzled by Anakin’s skill, his bold attitude.   
“Well,” Anakin says back, without looking up from his work. “Prob’ly not. I’ve only flown pods. But one day I will be. Me and my mom are gonna see the whole galaxy one day.”   
The pilots nod, tell him the planets they’ve been to and one of them brings Anakin a map of the galaxy so Anakin can check off planets as he learns about them. Shmi, who reads only a little better than Anakin, works through the map with him each night, scouring it until Anakin finds each planet he learned about that day. The map hangs above his bed, and he studies it every night as he falls asleep.   
The pilots tell him stories of magic and creatures that live among the stars. The stories Anakin liked most, more than the stories of Angels who lived on the moons of Iego, than of the flocks of purrgill flying free in space, or neebray (which, Anakin claims he has seen on Tatooine, in the desert) living in nebulae across the galaxy –more than all of that, Anakin loves stories of Jedi. The pilots claim they’ve seen –even met and talked to –a Jedi once every few months, and this, more than anything else, impresses Anakin more.  
According to Anakin, the Jedi are magic and strong. They carry laser swords to beat up bad guys, and –according to locals on Tatooine who overhear the freighter pilots in the Watto’s shop –they’ll come to here one day, free the slaves, or at least kill the Hutts. The pilots beg to differ, and Watto doesn’t like that kind of talk in shop, but Anakin eagerly asks anyone who will listen to him question after question about Jedi until Watto comes flapping along.   
“Mom,” Anakin asks one night. They are eating what counts as a good dinner on Tatooine. Anakin is pushing it around his plate with his fork. “When you were in space, did you ever see a Jedi?” Anakin looks up at her with big, expectant eyes.   
“Oh,” Shmi laughs, surprised. “No. I don’t expect so.”   
“The pilots say there are ten thousand Jedi in the whole galaxy,” Anakin informs her. “That’s a lot of Jedi. Are you sure you never met a Jedi?”   
“I’m pretty sure, Ani,” Shmi assures him. She doesn’t like Anakin’s questions about the Jedi. Soon, he’ll ask someone who knows a thing or two, he’ll start asking questions about the Force, then about himself. It’s dangerous for Anakin to even know about Jedi. Crazy wizards who live comfortably in Core Worlds rather than a police force connected to everything in the universe will be enough for Anakin for now. And it’s a dangerous enough line of thought. But one day, Anakin will learn about the Force. And then maybe he’ll use it, get them both into trouble. “I think I would know if I met a Jedi.”   
“Okay,” Anakin concedes and turns back to his dinner. “Only, Mama…” he probes, looking around the room cautiously like someone could be listening to them. “They should come here. This isn’t a good place to live. And that’s what the Jedi do, isn’t it? Help people?”  
Shmi sighs. “They can’t help us out here, Anakin,” she says sternly. “I doubt they even know we’re here.”   
Anakin’s face crumples. “Why not?”   
“I don’t know, Anakin,” she answers. And she doesn’t. No Jedi she’s ever heard of has come as far out as Tatooine, though the locals and the slaves tell stories. Shmi knows that in spite of its harsh climate, Tatooine is deeply connected to the Force. Maybe all deserts are. Life where there ought not to be any. Or maybe it’s just Anakin. Sometimes, a little plant life pops up in the driest patches of the desert the day after Anakin has been there. A coincidence, Shmi tries to convince herself. But it’s probably not. No such thing as coincidences in Shmi’s experience. But still, no Jedi, in their beds in the Core Worlds doing the bidding of a government she doesn’t understand, would ever come all the way out here. There’s nothing here. Just Anakin. And the Jedi don’t know about Anakin, otherwise he wouldn’t be here either.   
“What makes them magic?” Anakin asks after a few moments of contemplative silence. “How can they be magic?”   
“The galaxy is a strange place, Anakin,” Shmi tells him. Anakin looks at her intently. She doesn’t want to tell him any more, but Anakin will weasel it out of her. Nothing can stop him, once he’s got his mind set on something. He will learn about the Jedi, about the Force. He wants to, and he’s meant to –he’s born from it, after all. Shmi’s fingers tremble only a little. Anakin probably doesn’t notice, but Shmi feels it just the same. “The Jedi themselves must be magic.”   
“The old crazies talk about the Force,” Anakin whispers. “I believe in the Force.”   
Shmi’s heart stops for a moment. “You should, Anakin,” Shmi assures him. Though her voice is warm, she feels so cold. Anakin looks up at her with quizzical eyes. “It’s what keeps us alive. It keeps everything alive, here on Tatooine and in the whole galaxy.”   
“Is it what gives the Jedi they’re power?” he wonders. Shmi shivers. Anakin’s eyes are shining, like they do in her dreams, when he is a Jedi, when he’s the greatest Jedi ever. When he’s brought her and every person in the galaxy out of slavery. Determined and far away. He doesn’t look very young just then. He barely looks human.   
Shmi smiles at Anakin. “I wouldn’t know,” she lies, smoothing over the worrying in both of their faces. Anakin goes back to looking like a little boy. “I’m not a Jedi, and I’ve never met one.” 

Anakin is sitting in the back of Watto’s shop, crying when Shmi comes to find him at the end of the day. Shmi can hear him before she sees him, and she follows the sound of his hiccupping sobs to the back, where he’s got a handful of broken parts, trying futilely to put them back together. Shmi squats down next to him, sighing.   
“Ani,” she whispers. Anakin sniffs and looks up at her, a dark bruise blooming underneath his right eye. Shmi gasps.   
“I’m okay, Mom,” he gulps, swallowing the sob. Shmi reaches out and touches the bruise gingerly. “I’m sorry.”   
“Anakin…” Shmi sighs, wrapping Anakin in her arms. He buries his face in her shoulder, crying. She feels immeasurably sad, and frightened, even though she knows Anakin will be alright. It’s not the first time Watto has knocked him around. It won’t be the last. The anger she expects to feel is washed away by fear. She caresses his chin to see the bruise better. “What happened?”   
Anakin sobs, looking away from Shmi.   
“I –I was thinkin’ about the Jedi,” Anakin tells her. Shmi’s heart plummets and Anakin starts sobbing harder. “Mama, please don’t be mad at me.”   
Shmi picks Anakin up. He’s too big now to carry comfortably, long limbs knocking against her legs, but Shmi doesn’t mind. It’s not a long walk to where they live, and Shmi will carry Anakin as long as she can –as long as he needs it. She’ll still carry her son when she’s old, and he’s grown. If he needs her to, she’ll always carry him. And he needs her to now. His arms are twisted around her neck, and he’s shaking, and heavy against her breast.   
At home, Shmi washes Anakin’s face with the little water they have left for the month. She doesn’t like the way it looks, sitting at the bottom of a dusty pitcher, and it’s almost a waste, but it makes Anakin feel better. She promises herself they’ll be fine, and turns a smile on Anakin. He’s still crying. Still trying to fuse the broken metal bits back together.   
“Anakin, please tell me what happened?” Shmi presses.   
Without looking at her, he sniffs. “Mama, you have to promise not to be mad.”   
“Okay,” she promises.   
“I was thinking about the Jedi,” he says, not looking at her. “They’re magic, right?” Shmi is silent. Anakin sobs again. “And I was thinkin’ about some things in my life. I thought, I might be magic too. And if I just concentrated really hard, I could make these –” Anakin holds the parts up for Shmi to look at, but he still won’t meet her eyes. He chokes on another sob. “I didn’t!” he insists suddenly, like Shmi accused him of something terrible. “I promise, I didn’t, Mama!”   
“Didn’t what, Ani?” Shmi wonders. “What didn’t you do?”   
“Watto came in, he saw me sittin’ there,” Anakin recounts. He’s shaking again. “He hit me. Because I was lazy.”   
“Is that all?” Shmi asks. It’s a lot to get so worked up over. Watto has hit Anakin for less. But Shmi hopes it’s all. Jedi on Tatooine could mean trouble for the slavers, which would mean trouble for the slaves. Until Anakin is ready, his power must be kept secret.   
“No,” Anakin sobs. He finally looks up at her. “No, Mama.” He takes a deep, rattling breath. “When Watto hit me, he asked what I was doin’. I told him.”   
“About the Jedi?” Shmi asks.   
“Yes,” Anakin whispers. “But as soon as I said it, I realized I shouldn’t have. And Watto tried to hit me again, but he couldn’t. I’m too fast. He caught me. But he tripped. He said I did. I couldn’t have! I didn’t touch him!” Anakin is insistent, his eyes fiery. It hurts to have to look at him. Anakin probably didn’t do anything, Shmi tells herself. A coincidence. And she won’t tell him that he did. A floodgate that Shmi doesn’t want to open. “Watto said that if he can’t touch me, than he’ll touch you.” Anakin’s voice drops almost an octave, and Shmi’s skin crawls. “I told him I wouldn’t let him, and he hit me again. But when he did…” He lets the parts fall through his fingers. “These exploded. I didn’t do it, Mama. I promise.”   
Shmi doesn’t know what to say. Anakin probably did break the parts into irreparable pieces. Shmi had seen him use the Force when he was younger and upset. And he would do anything to protect Shmi, just as Shmi would do anything to protect Anakin. “You didn’t, Anakin, I believe you,” she lies.   
“Watto doesn’t,” Anakin tells her seriously. “He…he said that water was short this month. He said he hoped we saved some. He said he only has half the amount of water to give us this month. He said that I probably waste water the way I waste time and money. He said that we don’t need all the water he gives to us. He said…he said…”   
Withholding water is especially cruel, Shmi thinks as she listens to Anakin’s speech devolve back into sobs. They won’t have enough water to get through the month, and Shmi is already trying to ration what she knows won’t be enough to live off of in those last weeks. She shouldn’t have used the water to clean Anakin’s face. They’ll have to be especially careful about everything this month.   
“Stop crying, Anakin,” she says. It comes out a little harsher and more panicked than she means it to. Anakin flinches a little but he does. “We’ll be fine. The Force will keep us alive.” It will keep Anakin alive at least. The Force and Shmi will do everything they can to ensure that.   
“Mom,” says Anakin. “Are the Jedi…are they dangerous?”   
“Yes,” Shmi says without thinking. “You don’t want to be a Jedi.” Maybe one day Anakin will be, maybe if the galaxy were less cruel he would be now. But here on Tatooine, Anakin cannot be a Jedi, and here on Tatooine, it was dangerous to be.   
“I do want to be a Jedi,” he murmurs, mostly to himself. “But…I don’t want to hurt anyone. I don’t want to hurt you.”   
“One day,” Shmi tells him, repeating the story the old slaves used to tell her when she was young. “The Jedi will save us. They will bring life back to Tatooine, rid us of the Hutts. Free the slaves. But Anakin, it is very dangerous to be a slave on Tatooine. And the Jedi…” Shmi swallows. It’s not a lie, exactly. All of the stories she’s heard about Jedi make them seem like all-powerful gods, never sticking around too long. One adventure to the next. Flitting from star to star, without a home, without a family. At least Anakin has those two things. “They’re heroes, but they’re not our friends.” 

They make it through the month, but it’s a difficult one. Anakin complains all the time about being tired and thirsty. Watto makes sure to work him extra hard, and Anakin cries through the night. Other slaves sneak Anakin extra water, a piece of fruit, when their masters aren’t looking, only so that Anakin doesn’t cry.   
When the next month rolls around, Watto hands out their normal ration carelessly, and though Shmi is as thirsty –as desperate to drink –as Anakin, she keeps it out of reach. She’ll be more careful with their water from now on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As this fic approaches the one year mark, keep your eyes open for frequent (for the actual first time) updates and all pray that Christmas doesn't get to crazy so that it doesn't actually become the most drawn out wip I have ever done.


	9. Friends

There's a little boy sitting in the middle of the street, crying. Shmi recognizes him. He's one of the children Anakin plays with. Kitster, another slave. Anakin sees him before Shmi and he squirms out of Shmi's grasp and runs over to him. Shmi is only several steps behind. The rest of the crowd walks around him, but the boy – and now Anakin – is planted right in the center of the walkway, and Anakin grabs his hands, wrapping one arm awkwardly around his shoulder and leading him out of the way. Shmi can hear him comforting his friend in a low voice: "Don't want you to get trampled by an eopie, Kit, do ya?" Anakin stops in front of Shmi, looks up at her with pleading eyes. "He's hurt, Mom," Anakin tells her, like he's telling her a secret. His knuckles are turning white around Kitster's shoulders, his eyes burning with protectiveness and worry. He turns back to Kitster. "What happened?" he asks, before Shmi can.

"My master –" he hiccups. "I had to run. I-I'm scared." Anakin's face darkens, and the air gets heavier around them. They all know what happens to slaves who run. Kitster's tunic is singed at his arms and across his back, his skin burnt and bubbling from where he was lashed. His back is bloody from it, but there's no mistaking the burn marks. Shmi swallows her bile, and is grateful Watto's too cheap to keep such terrible instruments around. The Hutts have no such qualms about keeping their slaves in line, Shmi remembers all too well.

Without thinking, without saying a word, Shmi scoops up the boy. "Anakin," Shmi says seriously. "Go on to Watto's. I'll be there soon."

"Mom," Anakin protests. "Mom, please, I can help."

"I'm going to get Kitster cleaned up," she says, keeping her eyes locked on Anakin. Since he's turned seven, something in Anakin has shifted. He's more aware, more ready to argue with her. He's angry. He's just as kind and gentle and caring as before, but Shmi is afraid that he'll start to argue with her here, in public. She needs to get Kitster someplace she can clean his wounds, where he can rest and calm down. Anakin's anxiety is buzzing in the back of her head and she has no idea if Kitster can feel it too. It won't be long until the Hutts either track Kitster down or kill him, and Shmi has to let Kitster calm down before she sends him back. Anakin can't be there. He'll only make his friend more upset. "Okay?" she says gently. Anakin nods, something clicking. The buzzing in Shmi's ears subsides a little.

"Okay," Anakin agrees. He looks at Kitster again. "I'll see you soon, okay, Kit."

Kit nods and rests his head on Shmi's shoulder. He's shaking against her. Shmi doesn't wait for Anakin to start walking when she turns away, back towards their home.

She ducks through the low doorway, making sure not to jostle Kitster too much, and gently removes his torn, singed, and bloodied tunic. His eyes are watering and his hand is twisted in Shmi's sleeve as she cleans his wounds, applying what little bacta they have left.

"Ow," Kitster gasps under his breath. Like Anakin, Kitster is an optimistic, hopeful little boy, but he ultimately doesn't want to make a fuss. Doesn't want Shmi to notice his pain. Unlike Anakin, he's very quiet. Shmi didn't notice that Kitster's pain isn't hovering somewhere in the back over her mind until she's already finished cleaning his wounds.

"Sorry, Kitster," she says. "It's going to sting for a second longer." He nods his understanding. Shmi gets up, finds Anakin's extra tunic (one she had gotten him from the parts she sold, brand new, not worn even once). "Here you are," she says. "After you rest, I'll bring you home, okay?" Kitster nods and slips Anakin's tunic over his head. He's asleep within the minute.

Anakin comes home still worried about Kitster, but there's something else in the set of his shoulders. Kitster is still asleep in Anakin's bed, and Anakin goes to see him, plays on the floor next to Kitster, keeps glancing at his friend, hoping he will wake up and join him. He doesn't.

"Is he going to be okay?" Anakin asks later, sitting at the kitchen table as Shmi stirs hot mash for Kitster and Anakin.

"Of course," Shmi assures him. She doesn't know for sure, but she says it like it's the truth to stop Anakin from rattling the bowls on the table. More and more, the Force wraps itself tightly around Anakin, slipping out of his control. Shmi just tries to ignore it, hopes he'll learn, hopes everyone will just ignore the strange things that happen around her son.

"Watto was angry," Anakin says, his tone suddenly dark. Shmi doesn't turn to look at how stormy his eyes are. "He said you're gonna get it."

Shmi presses a warm bowl into Anakin's hand. "Go bring that to Kitster," she says seriously. "Then we'll talk about it." Anakin nods, hops off the chair. He returns in a few minutes, the storm in the Force cleared away a little, and Shmi gives him his dinner and sits across the table from him, watching him eat, thinking about what to do about him – his temper, his power. Just the other week, he pushed another child clear across a room. No one cares much about children on Tatooine, no one said anything to Anakin or Shmi or Watto about it later. But still. Every few months, he lets go a little more, and every time he lets go, he can't quite get the same grip he had before.

Ten years ago, Shmi didn't even believe in the Force.

"Kitster's fine, by the way," Anakin tells her. "He says thank you." Shmi smiles at him. Anakin meets her eyes, looks at her empty space on the table. "Aren't you gonna eat, Mom?"

"I'm not hungry," Shmi lies. But all the little slave boys she knows are. Anakin looks like he doesn't believe her and pushes his bowl almost imperceptibly closer to her.

"You're a really good cook, Mom," he says nonchalantly. "You should try it." Shmi ignores a nudge at the edge of her mind, reminding her of something she doesn't believe. But the Force isn't Anakin's only power, and he holds his spoon out to her, blinking up at her with his too-big, too-blue eyes.

She gives in. "Thank you, Ani," she says, tasting Anakin's dinner.

"We can share, Mom," Anakin insists.

"No, Anakin, I'm fine."

"Why're you helping Kit?" Anakin asks, moving the bowl inches closer still to Shmi, as if she wouldn't notice. Shmi can't help but smile at his effort. "You're gonna get in trouble."

"You would help him, wouldn't you?" Shmi says idly.

"Yeah, but he's my friend," Anakin says. "He's not your friend," he points out.

"No one looks out for us here, Anakin," Shmi says seriously. "So we have to help each other. We can make the Galaxy a little kinder by just helping each other."

"Even if we might get hurt," Anakin whispers like an echo.

"Sometimes, even if we might get hurt, we should still try to help each other."

Anakin beams up at her. "I think I can do that," he says confidently. "I can help people, whenever I see that they need help. Even if it's hard."

Shmi leans across the table to plant a kiss on the top of his head. "Then you will be a better man than almost everyone in the whole Galaxy," she says.

"Not better than you," Anakin assures her, pushing his bowl another inch closer to his mother.

Kitster is fine, and Anakin doesn't think much more about it. Watto looks at Shmi sternly, like he would like to beat her or sell her, but Watto is too cheap to dispose of her entirely, and he has been slow to lay a hand on either of them since the incident with Anakin last year. Shmi tries not to feel too smug as she herds Anakin into Watto's workshop and heads out to go sort through the parts that Anakin brought back from a different junkyard last week to see which they could sell and which had to be sent to the incinerator.

In the afternoon Anakin comes out to help her. He's got a black eye and scraped knuckles but Shmi doesn't say anything, in spite of the tightening in her heart. He picks through her pile of metal that's too useless to even be used as scrap, looking at pieces like Shmi was crazy for thinking they were garbage.

"Did Watto send you out here?" Shmi asks lightly, watching Anakin pocket rusted and bent machine pieces.

Anakin shakes his head. "No," he answers, his voice soft, his eyes far away. "I have a few minutes before I have to go watch the shop again." He looks at her, as if daring his mother to ask him about the bruise forming on his face. "I'm building something. Watto won't miss these."

"He might," Shmi warns him. Anakin rolls his eyes and sighs, plopping down on the hard stone, drawing his knees to his chest, looking up at Tatooine's twin suns.

"I'm tired of Tatooine," he whispers, mostly to himself. Shmi hums. Anakin runs his hands through the pieces of hot metal. "I'm tired of the dessert."

"I know, Ani," Shmi says. She doesn't know what else to say to her son.

"Will you tell me about your home planet again?" he asks, brushing sand away from his boots. "About the water?" Shmi's heart sinks. She barely remembers it, can't even remember if it's a memory or only a dream. And it does Anakin no good to hear about such things, when they're so far away, when it takes his mind off his work, when it puts him in danger. "Or about the stars?" His eyes are bright with something Shmi might think is hope, if she didn't know any better.

"Okay, but you must tell me a story later, too," she says, hoping she'll be able to get Anakin to tell her about his tussle.

"Yeah, okay," Anakin concedes, like he knows what Shmi has up her sleeve. "But not now. Watto's going to be looking for me soon." He stands up, brushes the sand off his pants and walks back to the shop, parts clinking softly together in his bag.

Anakin may be smaller than a lot of the other boys his age, but he's much stronger. If he notices, Anakin doesn't let on, except in his quiet skulking later as Shmi makes him eat a little bit of food. To bribe him (into eating, and into talking), Shmi repeats the same stories she has since Anakin's been a baby. Some legends that she heard growing up on Tatooine, some of them less than memories of a planet elsewhere in the galaxy and Anakin listens with rapt attention until he finally crumbles, scowls into his bowl.

"I didn't mean to hurt him," he grumbles, not really to Shmi. She sees from the corner of her eye that his gaze is shifting between her and the warped surface of the table. He's scratching a pattern into the table with his nails – his initials maybe. Shmi continues to look busy in the kitchen to keep Anakin talking. "He said I'm a liar about the podraces. That there's no way I could fly. He called me –" Anakin hiccups a little, this time looking at Shmi until he catches her eye; there's tears forming in the corner, threatening to fall. "Shag kung." It's not earth shattering, but Anakin is taking it hard. "I told him he could eat my dust next time, if he thought he could do better."

"Who, Ani?"

Anakin shakes his head and wipes his tears. "I hit him, we fought, but I – I didn't mean to…he's really hurt…I didn't mean to…" Anakin sniffles, trying to stifle his sobs. "He's not a slave, Mama, don't worry," Anakin mutters into his hands. "Watto won't have to pay for him." Shmi gathered as much, but her heart won't unclench. "I didn't mean to hurt him so much. I'm sorry. I'm –" He looks at Shmi like he wants nothing more than to climb into her arms but he's too afraid of what he might do if he even touches her. It's the third incident in as many months. If people haven't started to notice by now, they will soon. Watto will notice, sell Anakin back to the Hutts or just kill him himself. Either way, her son is dead. And Anakin shouldn't live in fear, of the Hutts or himself. "I'm sorry," he chokes past a sob.

Shmi steals herself to look for help first thing tomorrow. "You're just stronger and faster than you look, Ani, that's nothing to be ashamed of," Shmi tells him, pulling his hands away from his face before he wipes sand into his eyes and grease all over his face. "And if you're sorry, it means you won't do again, right?"

"Yes, Mama," Anakin agrees.

"You can apologize to the boy tomorrow," Shmi says. "And then it will be over with."

***

"Yes, Mama," Anakin agrees. His shoulders stop shaking. The moment of shame has past. He returns to his dinner, but Shmi doesn't have much of an appetite anymore.

"Will you be staying?" Shmi starts at the sound of the voice. Anakin is holding the old woman's hand, looking at Shmi with wide eyes. Shmi collects herself, gives Anakin a small smile.

"Yes," she says. The woman gestures to an old, warped chair in the corner of the dark room and Shmi sits on it, uncomfortable, watching her son and the woman intently. The woman leads Anakin to the other side of the room and squats on the ground with him. She lets go of his hand, smoothing her skirts as Anakin folds his legs underneath himself, casting anxious glances at Shmi every few seconds.

"Your mother tells me that you've been having trouble with some of the other boys in Mos Espa," the woman says matter-of-factly.

"I don't know why she would say that," Anakin mutters to his hands, but Shmi can hear it, and judging by the woman's laugh, so can she.

"Our mothers say the craziest things, don't they?" she whispers. Anakin cracks the smallest of smiles, sparing the woman the briefest of glances.

"Last week," Anakin admits hesitantly. "I didn't mean to, but I got into a fight with another kid and I broke his arm."

After the incident last week, Shmi scoured the dessert for someone who could teach Anakin about the Force discreetly. She found this woman – Stryka Torpoli, who lives alone outside Mos Espa, beyond Beggar's Canyon – who told Shmi not to worry. No one cared much for Force-sensitives out here, on Tatooine, but Stryka would take care of her son.

"He's powerful," Shmi had told her. "He doesn't – he has no father."

Stryka looked at her, then, but she didn't say what Shmi knew she was thinking. Her lips parted in an almost smile, her eyes miles away.

Now, she faces Anakin in her dark little hut, and just talks to him. Listens to him. She says nothing about the Force, but she smiles when Anakin talks about it, even if Anakin doesn't have the words to name it.

"Why do you live out here?" Anakin wonders suddenly. "Aren't you lonely?"

Stryka laughs again. "I've made an enemy out of Jabba the Hutt," she says. Shmi doesn't know if it's a confession or a joke, but Anakin smiles like she hasn't seen him ever do; there's something devilish behind that grin. "Besides, how could I be lonely, when I've got such nice visitors?" Anakin's grin melts into something less mischievous, something kinder and softer. Then, Stryka leads Anakin through some meditation exercises. Shmi doesn't understand half of what it's supposed to do, but Anakin listens intently, follows her instructions. When Stryka asks if he can feel it, Anakin nods, an excited glint in his eyes that Shmi can see from here in the low light.

Stryka's knees crack as she gets up. Anakin opens his eyes to look at her, but Stryka ignores him, gestures for him to continue his exercises, and walks over to Shmi and leads her outside. It's starting to get light out again. Shmi couldn't figure out how to explain both of their absences from Watto, so she took Anakin at dusk. Nights are short on Tatooine, and it had been a few hours. They could get going soon enough without fearing the night on Tatooine.

"I'm glad you brought him," Stryka tells her. She speaks in accented Basic like many on Tatooine. "It's difficult to be like him all the way out here."

"You can help him, keep him safe?" Shmi presses, some of the weight lifting from her shoulders. She doesn't mean to be prematurely hopeful, but Anakin seemed responsive to whatever Stryka was doing with him.

"Most children his age have started to innately control their power," Stryka says. "Or else the Jedi have taught them. But not him. I can help him control some of his power without him even knowing he's doing it. But I can't –"

"I don't need anything else," Shmi insists hastily. "I can't have the Hutts find out." Stryka humphs sympathetically. "I'm afraid of what they might do to him. I'm afraid that they'll see him as something more than just a little boy."

"I'm tempted to," Stryka admits. Her face is weather-worn, lined with years of loneliness and sun, but she casts a glance back inside to where Anakin is meditating restlessly, and when she looks back at Shmi, she looks years younger. "But if we can't get him to step back from the Force, then…" Stryka sighs. "He's very powerful. More powerful than anyone I've ever met."

"I know."

Stryka motions for Anakin to come outside and joins them. Anakin slips his hand inside of Shmi's. He feels the same, if a bit calmer. Styka bends down to look him in the eye, resting her hands on her knees. "Remember what I showed you. Do it every night."

"Yes, Miss Stryka," Anakin says somberly. "Thank you."

Shmi throws Stryka a last grateful smile and turns her back to the suns.


	10. Dark

Anakin goes to see Stryka for about a year, but they don't go often. They leave before dusk, as soon as Watto sends them home, stay through the night, and leave at dawn. Shmi is grateful for whatever help Stryka is providing, whatever peace she can give her son. Peace is safety for Anakin. And it seems to be helping, the meditation practice that Shmi spends long hours doing with Anakin when they can't make it to Stryka's. If he's no less angry, at least he's less likely to use the Force to help him express it.

They leave right from Watto's. Anakin is nearly nine. In the last year, he's grown another three inches. His clothes hang loose off his body, and his pants barely cover is ankles. Shmi hasn't had time to get him new boots, so he's barefoot as they trek across the desert. It's not so bad here, just outside of Mos Espa, but they'll be among the rocks soon, and Anakin is almost too big for Shmi to carry. Anakin won't complain, just slip his hand in Shmi's and look forward, squinting into the twin sunset.

Anakin freezes when they're still far enough away from Stryka's hut that the smoke rising in the distance could be from a fire to keep the cold out. His hand slips out of Shmi's, and Shmi is several paces ahead before she turns to see Anakin looking forward, following the smoke trail with his eyes. "Mom," he whispers. "Something's wrong." And as much as Shmi would like to ignore him, assure him there's nothing wrong, Anakin has that far-away look in his eyes that means the Force is warning him about something that no normal human would be able to tell. Shmi grabs his hand and drags him the rest of the way. It's too late to turn back now, even if Stryka's home is overrun with whatever desert-fiend attacked her. Shmi hopes it isn't the Hutts.

Stryka's house is still smoldering when they reach it. Shmi's heart sinks. She needs to see the inside, to see if whoever was here took Stryka with them, or if they left her here. She doesn't want to take Anakin inside, if her body is there, but she can't leave him out here in the open.

"Sand people?" Anakin asks, surveying the remains of Stryka's home. Shmi hopes so, if only because it means they have probably moved on. If the Hutts sent someone out here, they're probably waiting around for anyone Stryka may have colluded with. Shmi turns to Anakin, struggling to decide how much danger he is in staying out here while she looks for Stryka. "Mom, I think it was the sand people."

"I hope you're right, Ani," Shmi says, low enough she's not sure Anakin heard her. Anakin, his hand still wrapped in hers, leads them to Stryka's door. He looks up at Shmi expectantly. Shmi takes a deep breath. "Wait right here, Ani," she whispers. "If you see anything, come in, and keep your eyes closed."

"I've seen a dead body before, Mom," Anakin reminds her.

Shmi doesn't want to think too much about that, even though he has. Sometimes the streets of Mos Espa are riddled with them, and Anakin's been to the cantina with Watto, and he's always in those damned races, where there's at least one poor soul crushed off to the side of the track before the end. It doesn't mean that this death would be easier, it doesn't mean that Shmi relishes the idea of displaying another one to her young son. It doesn't make the matter-of-fact tone Anakin reminds her in any easier to stomach. Shmi cradles Anakin's face in one hand. She swallows her reassurance that Stryka might not be dead. They both know she is.

"For me," Shmi insists instead, and Anakin is old enough now to be annoyed with his mother, but young enough that he still listens to her.

"I'll keep watch," he offers nobly, turning his back to the door. "Call me in when you're ready. It's gonna get cold out here soon." Anakin crosses his arms over his chest, daring whoever is out there still to come and get him. Even though he's still only eight, Shmi would have second thoughts about messing with him, based just on the set of his shoulders.

Inside Stryka's hut is worse than the outside. The smoke was coming from Stryka's charred body, but the fire has mostly burned itself out. Nothing much flammable in this hut. Her possessions are missing or strewn about, but Stryka didn't have much in valuables –no food, water, or money, nothing much for gangsters or Raiders to take. Shmi can't tell if it was Hutts or Tuskens, but it doesn't matter. Whoever it was, is long gone, and they don't have much of a choice now, either way. Shmi pulls the one blanket left off of Stryka's now-useless bed, and covers her body with it. She swallows some bile.

"Ani," she calls, and Anakin turns on his heel at her voice and comes inside to survey Stryka's ruined home.

Anakin inhales sharply as her examines what remains of his teacher. He turns his head away so Shmi can't see the tears starting to flow.

"I'm so sorry, Anakin," Shmi offers helplessly, taking his hands, pulling him away from Stryka's body. "Don't look."

"I'm okay, Mom," Anakin chokes, still looking, craning his neck around to get a view. He wipes his tears away with his sleeve. He wriggles out of Shmi's clasp and sits cross-legged on the ground facing Stryka. "I'm okay," he repeats. Shmi comes to sit behind him, and Anakin leans into her, closing his eyes. There's not much coming off him – Stryka taught him basic shielding techniques so Shmi isn't as in tune with Anakin's every thought and feeling as she once was. Even still – Anakin is motionless, expressionless, but he's much smaller than she remembers him being a few moments ago.

They have to stay – there's nothing they can do about it now. The trek across the desert at night is perilous, and even if they could face the cold and the dark, they would be no match for the Tusken Raiders and all other sorts of creatures who couldn't brave the heat of day. And as the night grows darker and colder, Anakin moves closer into Shmi, and his shields start to crumble a little, his grief a palpable thing in the room with Stryka's corpse. It's in the corner, slimy and looming, and Shmi doesn't know what to do for her son except stroke his hair.

It is, though, the first time she's felt his grief, his fear, without a physical manifestation from the Force –or else, one that she notices. There's a slight draft, and Shmi attributes the fluttering of flimsi and fabric to the wind coming in through the door and windows. The suns rise, and with it, the slimy, greasy feeling that smeared itself on everything during the night abates – drawing away from where the light hits. Shmi doesn't think too hard about where it's receding to. She just picks up her shivering son – long, gangly legs and all –and walks back across the desert, praying to any god left in the galaxy that this adventure hasn't made everything worse for Anakin, who dozes fitfully on her shoulder under the heat of the twin suns.

***

Anakin is adamant about practicing what Stryka taught him. He sits, night after night, his eyes scrunched up on the floor, worrying holes into his pants. Shmi sits with him, after a few weeks. Anakin is crying silently, and Shmi's heart twinges.

"I can't do it," he mutters irritably. "I don't remember how."

"It doesn't matter, Anakin," Shmi promises. The same dark, greasy presence from the night they found Stryka is lurking in the corner, and in the last few weeks, Shmi has come to recognize that as a precursor for a meltdown, when Anakin is too tired to keep his shields up, when he lets everything in and everything out.

"It does matter," he insists, his eyes scrunched closed, his face screwed up like he was in pain. "Stryka always said it was important –the most important thing I could learn how to do."

"What did she teach you?" Shmi asks. She knows what she asked Stryka to teach him, but she also asked for her to be careful not to let Anakin know too much about why. Stryka promised it wouldn't be a problem. She would only teach him things that could be taught to non-Force-Sensitives. Things Jedi-Initiates learned at the Temple when they were still young. (Shmi never asked how she knew so much about the Force, how she knew so much about the Jedi. Privacy is important on Tatooine. She wishes, now, she knew more about Anakin's tutor.)

"To be quiet, to be strong," he murmurs, reaching up to wipe his tears. "But I – I don't remember how I did it with her. She said if I didn't learn, I wouldn't be safe." His eyes snap open. "If I didn't you wouldn't be safe."

"I am perfectly safe," Shmi assures him. The last rays of sun are glinting in through the little window, framing Anakin in a hazy, golden halo, and Shmi wishes she could focus on that, instead of whatever darkness she could only just see in her peripheral vision, lurking in the corner. Wishes she could believe what she said to him. "And you are strong," she promises. "And Stryka helped you for a while, right?"

Anakin shrugs. Shmi gathers him in her arms. "Yes," Shmi answers for him, as Anakin cries into her shoulder. "She helped you, even if you don't think she did."

"How do you know?" Anakin sniffles.

Shmi ignores the shadows creeping around them, tells herself it's the setting suns. She'll have to get up to turn on the lights soon. "Because I'm your mother," she says. "I know everything."

Anakin can't argue with her, and offers a weak laugh in response. "Not everything," he reminds her, but his heart isn't in it.

"Most things," Shmi amends. She doesn't know how to help her son herself. Her connection to the Force is through Anakin alone. When he's not near, it's like it was before he was born. And even when he is with her, she knows it's only a fraction of what he experiences. She doesn't know if he'll ever leave Tatooine, if he ever does what the galaxy has in mind for him. She doesn't know what he's been dreaming of lately. But she does know he stands out a little less from the other slaves and citizens on Tatooine, he's a little less strange, a little less radiant –the kind of radiant that drew all eyes, good and bad, and was too bright to stare at directly. She knows strange things have stopped happening around him, and there are less whispers that follow him.

She doesn't know if the shadow that always seems to be lurking behind Anakin is part of getting older or part of what Stryka had been teaching him. She doesn't know if it's there, or if Anakin knows about it. But, when the suns set completely, and she and Anakin are still on the ground, wrapped up in each other, there's no trace of the shadow, and Shmi doesn't think of it as a trick of the light.


	11. Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it, the end of the work. Originally, I had thought of this epilogue that was essentially Shmi's death, but I already did that actually, and I thought this was enough. I hope anyone who was reading this enjoyed it, and I'm very appreciative that anyone stuck around this long.

This is the year that Anakin leaves home, and Shmi thinks she can feel it from the second she wakes up on Anakin's ninth birthday. She tries hard to not let it color her interactions with her son, but when Anakin comes home with a Jedi trailing behind him her heart skips and she can barely contain herself from trapping him alone, explaining how important it is that this man take Anakin away from Tatooine, give her son the life she could never give him.

But for now, Shmi has to go about her days with Anakin simmering quietly beside her, trying not to act like if she turns around Anakin will be gone without a trace. She tries to focus, instead, on the day to day – Anakin's smiles, the moments of peace they have together. He's given up trying to practice what Stryka had taught him, and instead, Shmi catches him up late in the corner of the room working on something. If Shmi looks past him, in spite of Anakin's valiant attempts to block it from her sight, she thinks it may be a protocol droid. She thinks he's been working on it for years. Shmi sighs watching Anakin work in the near darkness, tension easing out of his shoulders as he works. When the light is gone completely, Shmi sighs loudly.

Anakin starts and looks over at her, smiles, tries to subtly cover his project, but Shmi catches a glimpse of short metal fingers. "Mom," he says. "Whatcha doin'?"

"Go to bed, Anakin," Shmi says. "There's plenty of time to finish your secret project during the day."

"Oh," Anakin says. His brow crinkles like Shmi brought up something he's never considered before. "Mama," he says, extending his hand towards her. "Would you like to see?"

Shmi nods comes to stand at Anakin's side, and he pulls the cover all the way off of his droid. Shmi runs her hand through Anakin's hair, her heart twinging at the thought of her nine-year-old up late, meticulously putting a droid together.

"He's a protocol droid, and he's for you," Anakin whispers. "I thought you could use an extra set of hands, but he's not finished, so…" Anakin shrugs, like it's no big deal. He covers the droid again. He turns to Shmi again, eyes expectant and wide.

Shmi picks Anakin up. "He's beautiful, Ani," she tells him, planting a kiss to the top his head, carrying him to his bed. "Thank you."

***

In the months between Anakin's ninth birthday and the day the Jedi come to Tatooine, Anakin crashes another one of Watto's pods. It's mangled, and won't be ready to fly for at least another year, but Anakin is hurt much worse than the pod, not that he notices. In fact, Anakin is proud, standing in the middle of the track with a gash on his head, gloating, gushing assurances that he will be able to repair the pod. He's practically glowing with it. Anakin walks unsteadily towards Watto as the droids swarm around the heap of metal to collect it. Watto doesn't look at him, but he cuts Anakin's food rations in half and tells Shmi if he catches her sneaking Anakin any extra they'll learn what it means to be hungry. Not that Shmi believes a word he says anymore. Anakin, it has become clear, is too great of an asset for Watto to ever really do much more than threaten and Anakin has made it clear that if anything happens to his mother, the consequences would be disastrous.

Anakin is smirking at Watto, and Watto claps him on the back of the head for insolence, but Anakin just keeps smiling. "I'm gonna finish one day," Anakin promises, his gaze faraway. Shmi doesn't know if it's from the concussion or the adrenaline, but she pushes her way through the crowd to grab onto Anakin's hand. It's clammy.

Watto just rolls his eyes. "Not without a pod you're not," he says. "You cost me more money than you make me, boy."

"I'm gonna _win,_ " Anakin continues, like he doesn't hear Watto. Maybe he doesn't. He hasn't even acknowledged Shmi, except to squeeze her hand. He stumbles and Shmi scoops up her son, steadying her breath now that Anakin is out of immediate danger.

Anakin spends the next few weeks hungry, even with whatever extra food Shmi can scrounge up for him, but he doesn't complain. He barely seems to notice and he's out much longer than Watto keeps him. She hopes he's not getting into trouble, but he always comes back home with grease stains on his hands and clothes and Kitster not far behind him. He's smiling and laughing, but he still seems far away. He must feel whatever Shmi feels – that his days on Tatooine are numbered.

***

It's a week before the Jedi come. The protocol droid is almost finished. Anakin is in high spirits. It's a week before the Boonta Eve Classic, and Anakin knows he won't be allowed to race (Shmi is grateful – she doesn't yet know it's the Jedi who are coming, and she hopes the pit of dread and anticipation settling into her stomach isn't about Anakin's death in a podrace), but he's looking forward to it nonetheless. But it's a week before the Jedi come, and even though neither Anakin nor Shmi know that yet they can feel it – the Force shifting around them. Something big is about to happen, about to change.

Anakin is still awake with her, one week before the Jedi come. He is restless, jittery, laying with Shmi in her bed. Nightmares, he said, when he climbed into bed. The worst he's ever had. She knows by the light in the perfectly dark room that Anakin is still awake, but they both pretend to sleep, worried that they'll ruin the quiet, ruin the last few minutes they have together. The night is cold, colder than it's been in months, and Anakin shivers against Shmi, and Shmi pulls him closer, running her hands through his hair.

"Mama," Anakin whispers into the dark. "I don't wanna leave you." He sounds very young then, very lost, like Shmi is only a memory in the dark. Anakin talks in his sleep, so maybe he has drifted off.

"Why would you leave me?" Shmi asks breaking the silence. The room seems to shiver with her voice, or maybe that's just Anakin.

He shrugs. "Just a feeling," he gives as an answer. "And I don't like it." Shmi knows the feeling. She doesn't like it either.

"Ani," she sighs. "One day everything will be different." It's all she can offer in consolation. She knows it's not enough from the feeling of Anakin's shoulders drooping.

"I wish everything would be the same forever," he whispers. "I wish this is exactly how the whole rest of my life is going to happen." With Anakin on the brink of sleep, nothing to hurt him, his mother's arms surrounding him. The closest to peace Anakin has ever known. Even now, though, he is unsettled.

"I wish for you a better life," Shmi whispers into his ear. "One I cannot give you." It's the first time Shmi has ever told Anakin this, her one dream for the future, but she feels that the end of her story with Anakin is drawing closer all the time, and she needs Anakin to know that this life on Tatooine is no life at all. It's not even safe. "There's a whole galaxy out there, Ani, and it's waiting for you. It wants you to explore it. You can't do that if you're always stuck here on Tatooine."

Anakin sighs, settles his head against Shmi's arm. "You could come with me," he whispers. Shmi knows when he says it that it's unattainable. Anakin must too. He doesn't move, but he feels smaller in her arms than he did a moment ago. "I don't think I want to see the galaxy without you."

Shmi swallows past the knot in her throat. "Some things aren't for us to decide," she says weakly. Shmi knows if it were up to her, she would never let her son go. She knows Anakin thinks the same, his fingernails clawing into her arm. He's stronger than any nine-year-old has any right to be. Shmi doesn't think she'll be the same when Anakin finally lets go.

"Not if I can help it," Anakin murmurs darkly. Shmi wishes she knew why it made her feel so afraid.

***

The Jedi come. His name is Qui-Gon Jinn and he takes Anakin's blood and looks at him like he's somewhere between a miracle and a monster, and Anakin is used to people looking at him like that so he doesn't notice. Besides, Anakin is too busy looking at Padme – a pretty girl of fourteen who smiles at Anakin like he's nothing more than a little boy – and Qui-Gon's lightsaber to even look up at the Jedi's weather-weary face. When Anakin brings them home she knows that this is her last day. If it's not what the Force had in mind, it's what she has. She will not let the Jedi leave without her son. It's not much of a battle to convince him, either. But he says the Jedi will be wary of him, so she doesn't tell him how powerful Anakin really is.

"He must go with you," Shmi says. Qui-Gon looks at her curiously. "He's not meant to be here."

Qui-Gon smiles. "I will take him back to Coruscant," he promises. "I will do my best to teach him. He is a remarkable boy."

But promises made in the cover of night are easier to make than to keep, and Shmi does not fault him for not trying harder to free her as well as her son. It is not her destiny that she feels so strongly in front of her. She is barely a blip in the galaxy. It is Anakin the Jedi have come to find, even if they do not know it, and it is Anakin they must leave with.

It doesn't make saying goodbye any easier. Shmi has never been away from Anakin for more than a few hours, she's never been in another hemisphere from her son. It seems to her, as he walks away, pressing as close as he can to Padme, that Anakin has always been a part of her. She swallows her panic at the thought, that she cannot protect him any longer, and he turns his blue eyes back on her, again. He mouths something in Huttese so the Jedi and the girl cannot hear it or understand it.

 _I love you, Mama_ , he mouths, but Shmi can feel it reverberate in the air between them, she can hear it like he whispered it into her ear. She watches until Anakin disappears beyond the horizon, and then, an hour later, she knows he is gone, taking the Force with him, and at last, she cries.


End file.
